Building Neptune
by La Mentira
Summary: Ensemble cast. By trying to save someone else, X-Men and B-hood members alike learn how to save themselves. Slash. John/MOC Bobby/MOC John/Bobby Toad/MOC. OC-centric, but about the groups as a whole. M for sex, violence, language. Post X2, Jean lived.
1. Prologue:Wasting Time in the Wading Pool

Building Neptune

Prologue: "Wasting Time in the Wading Pool"

"Our intel has brought a new player to our attention." Behind his ostentatiously large metal desk, Magneto leaned back in his chair and twirled a bit of metal suspended above his hand. "The X-Men have been tracking a young man in Lower Manhattan, a very powerful elemental with a rough history. It's my suspicion that a mutant of his background would feel more at ease with our operation than working for blood traitors." He spat the last words.

Toad straightened up from a crouch, a grin of stumpy, yellowed teeth on his face. Pyro shoved his hands into his pockets. "Leave it to us, boss. We'll check the guy out."

Magneto smiled. From his breast pocket, he produced a bit of paper and slid it across the desk. "He works here."

Though less than respectable by conventional standards, the club seemed decent and had a good flow of customers—mostly young, gay men in search of meaningless sex and more than a few older men looking for young, gay men. Pyro strode in as if he'd been there a thousand times before—and who knew if he had. Toad kept his head down, the hood of his sweatshirt hiding his ugly and somewhat infamous face.

Pyro spotted their target first: Calin Sean Hogan, disowned teenage son of Sean Achaius Hogan, a leader of the Massachusetts republican party with strong connections to the Boston Irish mob. The boy's quiet manners still betrayed his wealthy upbringing, but if they hadn't known his background ahead of time, neither would have guessed that Calin had ever been anything but a skanky street urchin. The fake, playful half-smile plastered on his face was one John would liken to the expressions of a number of girls in the sizeable prostitute population in the mutant districts. The boy's black t-shirt clung to a muscular but too-lean frame and the pants hidden behind the bar weren't any more modest. Calin's hair was short and gelled up, and between the tight sashay of his hips and the playful laughs supplied to anyone who wanted them, his tip jar was doing pretty well.

John said, "He's cute."

"Thought you were back to fuckin' women." Toad craned his neck, searching for the bartender.

"Just lately. It's hardly a pick one sort of thing." He pointed Calin out. "Besides, for that, I could certainly make an exception."

Toad looked the target over. Blonde hair, broad shoulders, and bright, bright, unnaturally blue eyes. He snorted. "Y'certainly have a type, Johnny boy."

"Shut up."

Pyro started walking toward the bar, stopping short when the stools in front of it came into view. Calin grabbed a clean glass and carried it over to a man sitting at the bar, the man in rose-quartz sunglasses and a self-righteous grin. God damn it. Scott-fucking-Summers.

He scowled and tugged Toad around to the other side of the bar, close enough to hear but out of Summers's line of sight. Trying to attract as little attention as possible, the two stood and listened.

The boy leaned over the bar. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"My name is Scott Summers. I'm a teacher at a school for mutants. I want to offer you a place at our school."

Calin laughed. "Seriously? Am I on Candid Camera or something? Where's Ashton?"

"Your talent has come to our attention and we think you could benefit from our training."

"Look, honey, I'm sorry, but I don't think—"

But they didn't get a chance to find out what the kid didn't think. The kid jerked straight up to attention, eyes fixed on the far end of the bar, fake smile nowhere to be seen. Toad turned to get a look at a man walking toward the kid and Summers: dark hair, a subtle frown, gym-built muscles. He didn't look older than thirty, but was definitely older than the teenager staring at him in terror.

Calin plastered on a far less convincing smile. "Matt!" He turned toward him, ignoring Scott. "I didn't expect you to stop by tonight." He leaned on the bar, trying to make himself look enticing. This only seemed to displease "Matt" further.

"We need to talk. Now."

The fake smile disappeared and he nodded, glancing over at another bartender. "Hey, Danny, cover for me, okay?" He didn't wait for a response before he hopped over the bar and followed the mystery man back toward the quiet of the restrooms.

"I'll follow," Toad said. "You just make sure Cyclops leaves."

They had gone into a storage room across the hall from the bathrooms. Toad leaned against the closed door as someone—his money was on the kid—slammed into one of the shelves. He heard the kid's bright, fey little voice over the sound of mops falling.

"Matt, baby, I wasn't flirting with him, I promise."

Jesus. Toad rolled his eyes. This was not happening.

"Of course you were." The boyfriend's voice had the cold, rough sound of a sociopath. And Toad would know. "You were flirting with him like you flirt with all these assholes. Didn't I say you should quit this shithole? You just like the attention."

"I'm being nice, baby. You have to be nice to get tips."

"Yeah, and we both know what you'll do for money, don't we?"

"Matt, you're hurting me."

"No, Cal. You're hurting me. You think I like seeing you shake your ass at any guy that comes your way? Huh?"

A smack and a small cry of pain.

"I love you. You know I love you."

"Show me. Show me how much you love me, Callie."

"Matt, I have to work—" Calin protested.

"Don't you want to make it up to me? Tell me how much you want to make it up to me."

"I do." His voice shook. "Please, Matt. Let me."

A pause. A zipper. The sound of saliva and slurping.

Toad grimaced as the boyfriend started groaning. He'd heard enough. Toad headed back to the club, grabbing Pyro by the arm on his way to the front door.

"What the fuck?"

"Kid's fuckin' pathetic. Not Brotherhood material, no way."

"Who's the guy?"

"Th'boyfriend. S'back there smackin' th'kid around."

"Jesus."

They went around back to the parking lot and stopped for a smoke. They leaned against the car, Toad glaring out at the street and John facing the club. The back door opened and the kid tripped down over the threshold. He didn't look scared or guilty like John had imagined, just tired and slightly nauseated. He sat down on some boxes behind the building, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

"That boyfriend of yours is trouble," John called to him. Toad turned around and rolled his eyes. He didn't know why John was bothering. There was no way some battered-housewife fairy would make it in their world.

Calin opened his eyes. Even in the dim light of the parking lot, Toad could make out that bright, ultramarine sort of blue. He wondered if they were actually glowing or just highly reflective.

"Overheard from the hallway," John explained. "He's done a number on you."

The boy stood up, glared at him. "Thanks for the concern, but I've got it under control."

John smirked. Rebellion—something he could understand. "Come here."

Calin hesitated, but walked over toward the car, casting a suspicious look toward the hooded, silent figure on the other side of the car. Toad glanced at the ground and saw the puddles in the parking lot following the kid in a silent little stream. The kid wasn't a total idiot, then.

"What do you want?"

John pulled a business card from his back pocket. It was blank except for his number. He passed it to Calin. "Give me a call when you get sick of it."

"When y'grow a pair and ditch the fucker," Toad spat. He dropped his cigarette and stamped it out before opening his door and getting into the car.

The kid looked them over warily.

"I'm not trying to pick you up or anything," John told him with a grin. "We can help you out."

Calin glanced down at the card. He tucked it into his pocket and walked away.


	2. 1: Diving into the Deluge

Building Neptune

Chapter 1: "Diving into the Deluge"

Cal didn't see that teacher guy again for over a week, and, honestly, it wasn't much hardship for him. He'd never done too well in school, and Matt would never hear it anyway. Not to mention that after the last time he was a little wary of being seen talking to the guy.

Anyway, things had been going really well that week. Matt had finished retaking his MCATs (which were probably why he'd been in such a mood that night—testing for days at a time does that to a person) and had a few days off after that. They'd gone out to dinner and a show on Sunday, Monday they'd screwed in every room in the house, and Tuesday they had movie night. Then Wednesday Matt was back to interning at the hospital and Cal was back to sleeping until noon, cleaning the apartment to keep busy, and working at the club at night. Matt even managed to get night shifts for that week. Usually, when they both worked, they were like two ships passing in the night, Cal climbing into bed an hour before Matt had to wake up.

Really, it was just a series of poorly timed circumstances. Another intern called in sick that morning, so Matt got stuck with a double shift from 8 AM until 2 AM. Cal was working the early shift at the club, 9 PM until 1 AM.

At 1:10 AM, when he walked up to their apartment building, the teacher with the red glasses had a car parked out front. He was leaning on the side, waiting for Cal. Glancing around the dark, empty street, the young man approached the car. "What are you, following me now?"

"I think you might be in some trouble."

Cal pulled some moisture from the pavement and the grass toward himself, keeping it close just in case. "Why's that?"

"Because your boyfriend is abusing you." He said it just like that, no inflection, no change in facial expression. Just a fact.

Cal laughed disbelievingly. "All of the sudden everyone's worried for my health."

Summers pulled a business card from his jacket pocket. It's déjà vu all over again. "Here's my number. We can help you. We can give you a place to stay. You deserve better than whatever this guy is giving you." He stepped forward and tucked the card into Cal's shirt pocket.

Pain registered on the young man's face. It became hopelessness and a sheen of tears gathered in his eyes as a voice called out from the building entrance behind him. "Cal."

Cal bit his lower lip and nodded at Summers. "I have to go." He turned and walked back to Matt.

Cal would not find out until later Matt's end of these poorly timed circumstances. Just before midnight, Matt's attending pulled him aside to give him his test scores. After breaking the news, he decided that his intern was too tired and upset to finish his rounds. Matt spent a half hour pacing around the apartment, angry and tired and panicked, before he looked out the window to see what he thought was an intimate conversation and an exchanging of numbers between his boyfriend and a man he'd seen him flirting with a week earlier.

Cal followed him into the apartment apologizing, but Matt wasn't listening.

"Fucking whore. All the shit I put up with for you, all the shit I do for you and what the fuck do I get for it, huh?"

Cal shut the door behind him and kicked off his shoes. "Matt, I don't even know who that guy was. He was waiting for me when I got home."

He grabbed Cal's collar and slammed him against the wall next to the door. "What, looking to buy a piece?" He slammed him against the wall again. He grabbed Cal's chin so he couldn't look away. "Everyone looks at you and thinks they can have some. But you're mine, Callie. Aren't you mine?"

"You know I am. I would never hurt you like that."

Matt looked him over. "That mouth is good for two things, baby. Sucking cock and lying." He grabbed Cal by the arms hard enough to bruise and shoved him across the room. Cal slammed sideways into the small dining room table. He made a noise like a yelp. Matt grabbed him by the hips, pinned Cal between himself and the table. He undid Cal's belt and fly. "I'm the one doing all the work here. I'm the one that has to remind you who you belong to. Do you know who I am? Do you know how lucky you are to be with me? How lucky you are that I put up with your shit? What kind of street urchin whore gets to be with someone like me?" He shoved his hand into Cal's jeans and squeezed him roughly. He leaned forward and growled into his ear, "I'm gonna show you who you belong to."

He yanked his boyfriend's pants down to his thighs, and Cal started crying a bit. "Matt, don't."

And everything that guy in the parking lot said, everything that fucking Summers guy said were ringing in his ears while Matt grabbed at his hips. He tried to push away from the table. Panic rose in his chest. He tried to twist away. Matt smacked the side of his face. The instant his hand connected with Cal's cheek, the pipes in the kitchen burst and water came pouring into the apartment.

Matt shoved him away and backed off. "What the fuck did you do, you little shit!"

"I can't help it! You're fucking crazy!"

Matt grabbed a candlestick off of the table and swung. Pain exploded in Cal's left eye. His legs crumpled under him. Red filled the left side of his vision, but, from the ground, he could still see with his right eye. Matt standing over him, raising the candlestick again.

Cal thought, Holy shit, he's really going to kill me this time.

In that split second of panic, several things happened at once. At that moment in Xavier's Mansion, Professor Xavier was checking in on Calin with Cerebro after Scott had called in to report trouble. The Professor detected dangerously high stress levels and mutant activity. In the apartment, Cal gave a tug with his mind. The water on the floor came surging around him all at once, but that wasn't all he'd done. Perhaps it was his connection to a powerful telepath at the time or perhaps this intense stress was enough to trigger a secondary mutation on its own. In any case, Matt suddenly froze in place, candlestick held high. His skin seemed to move for a moment before a rush of water flew out of him, tearing him apart as he stood. Cal passed out.

Scott was outside the apartment door in his visor just a few minutes after Xavier called him back. There was no noise except for running water. He narrowed the setting on his visor and blasted the lock out of the doorknob. Water rushed out when he pushed open the door. He took in the sight as best he could. The boyfriend was dead, mutilated. Cal was lying on his side, half submerged and inhaling quite a bit of water. His pants were around his knees and his left eye bled profusely.

He hauled the kid out of the water and lay him on the table. He pushed at his chest. Cal coughed up some water, but wouldn't regain consciousness. Sirens approached outside. The neighbors had called in a domestic disturbance. Lifting the boy's hips carefully, Scott pulled his pants up. He sighed.

"What a mess."


	3. 2: Surfacing in the Swirling Shallows

Building Neptune

Chapter 2: "Surfacing in the Swirling Shallows"

Beeping monitors. Cold sheets. A woman's voice.

"Have you people even bothered to train your staff to treat mutation-related injuries? No, I didn't think so. So unless you know another doctor who has dedicated her _life_ to the study of mutation, I will be treating the boy."

"Dr. Grey, the police have yet to question the boy. It's a sensitive situation—"

"They won't get to question him if he doesn't pull through."

Cal tried to open his eyes, but the left one was covered with a bandage. The right one blinked open, greeted by a white ceiling and fluorescent lights. His throat was dry. He coughed, and suddenly two lab-coat-clad figures were hovering over him—a bespectacled white-haired man and a red headed woman with a low-cut shirt and an expensive necklace.

"Calin, I'm Dr. Grey. How are you feeling?"

He assessed his aches and pains. His eye throbbed like a heartbeat. There was a stabbing pain in his side. His body ached and his head hurt. His throat felt like it had been scraped with sand paper. "Thirsty." His voice sounded raspy.

"He's probably dehydrated," Dr. Grey said.

"He's hooked up to an IV."

"His mutation is related to water. Overuse of it could cause more advanced dehydration than you would normally see. Get another IV going. And get the boy some water."

The old man scowled and left.

"What happened?"

Grey smiled and pushed his hair off his forehead. "You were fighting with your boyfriend."

The memories rushed back in pieces, and he flinched. "Yeah."

"He nearly put your eye out. What did he hit you with?"

"A candlestick. From the table." Cal stared at the ceiling, still seeing that look on Matt's face.

"The stress of the fight triggered a secondary mutation. You pulled the water from his body." She paused. "You couldn't have helped it. Your body acted instinctually."

He looked up at her face. She had sympathetic eyes. "He's dead, isn't he?"

Dr. Grey nodded.

Cal looked away from her. His throat tightened up. It felt like someone was sitting on his chest. Pressure built behind his eyes, but no tears came. He was too dried out.

* * *

"We were in the process of offering Mr. Hogan a place at our school," Scott told the detective. "When I approached him, his boyfriend must have thought I was hitting on him. They went into the back of the club, supposedly to talk, but I asked one of his coworkers and he told me the boyfriend had been abusing him."

"Did you personally see any signs of abuse before the murder?" he asked, glancing from the tape recorder to the two-way mirror on the other side of the room.

"Alleged murder. And yes. I went into the club the next night to check up on him. I didn't approach him, but I could see a bruise on his face. But the look on his face whenever the boyfriend came around was enough to know something was wrong."

"How so?"

"The kid looked terrified."

"And did he look that way when you saw him the night of the incident?"

"Yes. Upset, too. Like he might cry."

"Did he look angry at all?"

Scott's brow furrowed. "No. It was obvious to me that the boy was stuck in a bad situation."

"Why did you go back to the apartment?"

He sighed. "Knowing what was probably going on in there, I had to."

The detective leaned back in his chair and looked the mutant over, jaw jutted forward. "And what did you find when you got there?"

"Lots of water. The boyfriend was dead. Cal was passed out, bleeding, breathing in water. His pants were down. I pulled him out of the water."

"What was your impression of what had happened?"

"I figured the boyfriend had tried to rape him."

* * *

Jean tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "We know very little about secondary mutations at this point in time. From what we have observed, they emerge much like primary mutations, just later in development. Most appear before the age of twenty, but some have emerged much later. The mutation is always closely related to the primary, a sort of extension of their powers. Not all mutants have them, but we're seeing more and more cases."

The detective looked rather repulsed by the whole conversation. "And what are the signs of these…secondary mutations?"

"Like primary mutations, they appear during times of intense stress, usually with little warning. However, while primary mutations are typically well-supported by the body, secondary manifestations can cause intense stress and fatigue. In combination with the concussion he received, that's probably why Calin was unconscious for so long."

He frowned. "And is this a typical case? Killing someone?"

"Of course not," Jean snapped. "It's the same as the original mutation. You're in law enforcement. You must have been called to more than a few manifestations. Sometimes it's something small but startling, like falling through the floor. Other times, when the mutation is more powerful, manifestation can be dangerous. We have a student who accidentally put her boyfriend into coma while they were kissing."

"Don't they have any control over it?"

She sighed. "It takes time and energy to learn to control a mutation. The first appearances are almost always involuntary, instinctual."

The detective leaned back in his chair with a scowl. "Okay, so what the fuck happened in there?"

"Calin's primary mutation is the manipulation of water. He can't control anything that's in the water, so, for instance, if he manipulated a glass of sugar water, he would leave the sugar and pull out pure water."

"So what's the secondary thing?"

"Now, I can't be sure until I see the autopsy results, but I believe something similar happened to the boyfriend. Humans are made up of sixty percent water. Remove that all at once, and it would cause the skin to tear and the body to shrivel. It's more complicated than his usual mutation because the body's use of water is more complex. It's like the difference between getting water out of a lemon and getting water out of a loaf of bread. It's in both of them, but it's much easier to get to it in the lemon."

"Do you believe that the murder of Matthew Cameron could have been intentional?"

"No, I don't."

* * *

"Feeling better?" The detective looked the boy over skeptically. He was sitting in the hospital bed, gown and all. He had two hand-shaped bruises on his upper arms and another bruise on the right side of his face. His left eye was still heavily bandaged.

"Not really," Cal deadpanned.

The detective picked up his chart. "Laceration to the left eye and a fractured cheek bone. Bruising, two separated ribs, and extreme dehydration. Quite a fight."

"Yep."

"The nurses say you've been pretty upset about it."

"Of course I am."

"Feeling guilty?"

Cal looked away. "Yeah."

"Now why would that be?"

"Are you retarded? I killed him."

"But he was abusing you, wasn't he?"

"That doesn't mean I didn't love him. I didn't mean to, but he's dead now and it's because of me." The boy leaned back down on the bed and wouldn't look at the officer. "Can we finish this later?"

Sighing, the detective stood. "No. I think I've got all I need."


	4. 3: Adjusting to the Aquarium

Building Neptune

Chapter 3: "Adjusting to the Aquarium"

"How old are you, really?" Jean leaned back in her chair, somehow looking both sympathetic and incredibly casual. No pressure. Let's just talk. That bullshit.

Cal, on the other hand, sat on the edge of the couch cushions. His leg jittered anxiously. He tried to shift in his seat and grimaced, placing a hand over his bandaged side. He stared at the ground between them.

"Be careful," she chastised. "They won't heal if you keep moving around like that."

"I'm fine." His eye was still heavily bandaged.

"Good. Then how about you answer my question?"

He risked meeting her eye for a moment. "Twenty-one."

"Calin." Her voice was sharp.

"Okay, eighteen."

"Cal…"

He paused, glanced up at her again. "Fine. Seventeen."

"Do you have any family? Parents?"

Cal looked at her warily. "I can't go back there."

"No one is sending you anywhere. I'd just like to know." She offered him a small smile. "We have a lot of students here that have run away or were kicked out. They live here, in the school. We would like you to stay here with us, too, but it's important that you and I can trust one another."

He chewed on his lower lip. "They kicked me out when I was twelve."

"Because you're a mutant?"

Cal finally sat up a bit and looked her in the eye. "No. Because I'm gay."

Jean frowned briefly, but tried to keep her expression neutral. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sure it hurt that they couldn't accept who you were."

"I wasn't going to tell them. I wasn't ever going to tell them." His gaze slid back to the floor.

"How did they find out?"

He hesitated, looking her over before undoing the top few of buttons on his shirt. He turned his back to her and lowered his shirt over his shoulders, exposing faint white scars just below his neck. Jean leaned forward so she could see properly—three crude letters. "FAG." Calin didn't move, not willing to turn back around. He wouldn't be able to say this if she was looking at his face. "They were eighth graders, they caught me after P.E. They made me lie face down in the showers. They…they said it was so every guy that ever…that ever fucked my faggot ass would have to see it and know what we were."

Behind him, Jean was still leaning, elbows on her knees. She lifted a hand over her mouth, not sure if she was covering up sadness or anger. "You were only twelve…"

He finally pulled his shirt back up but kept his back to her while he buttoned it. "I had a boyfriend. Kind of. A ninth grader. I didn't know how much trouble I'd be in if people found out." He turned around, his expression impressively blank.

"So the kids at school found out about the kind-of boyfriend…and your parents found out about the boys at school. And they didn't care that you'd been hurt?"

"The football coach called them to pick me up from school. When we got home, my dad said, 'Well, are you?' I didn't know what to say. And I guess not saying anything was a good enough answer."

Jean ground her teeth. "I hope you know that what they did is completely unconscionable."

"Un-what?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Wrong. Against the conscience." Jean leaned back in her seat again and looked him over. "Was that the last time you went to school?"

Cal shook his head. "I went for another year. My kind-of boyfriend's parents let me stay with them for a while. They were pretty cool, I guess, but when I got my powers…well, it was way more than they bargained for. It was too much, I could tell. And it was too much for me. I was freaked."

"How did you first manifest—or, show your powers?"

He placed a hand on his ribs to steady himself as he scooted back on the couch. "Some kids were picking on me again, nothing new, really. But then they tried to cram me into this locker—one of the gym lockers, which are a lot smaller, you know? Anyway, I hit my head and kind of panicked, and the next thing I knew, the showers and sinks pretty much exploded. There was just a ton of water and all of the other kids got knocked down. When I got out of the locker, though, it moved away from me like a path or something."

"Did it scare you?" She tried to decode the faraway look in his eyes.

He smiled for a fraction of a second before it disappeared. "No, no it was the first time in a long time that I'd felt…powerful. Like I was in control."

She smiled carefully. His was an unusual reaction: not panic, not confusion, but some sort of relief. "It felt right for you."

Cal nodded and actually smiled at her. "Yeah. It made sense. For that second, anyway." His smile started to unravel. "I mean, after that, I had to go home and I had to deal with being a fag _and_ a freak and I had to decide if I needed to leave the Cooper's house, which I did. And that—all that was confusing. But the powers weren't."

"We've got some nice facilities here, all designed to help students develop their powers. Practice rooms, even a pool. Do you think it would help you if you could work with your powers on a regular basis?"

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. "I mean, while I'm here, yeah, I guess I'd want to."

Jean smiled. "While you're here."

* * *

Cal had stayed in one of the empty guest rooms when he first got back from the hospital, but now that he was technically considered a student, Scott had placed him with a roommate. The boy had been more than hesitant at first, saying he didn't think it would be a good idea, he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. Scott insisted that his new roommate was an all-around good guy that got along with everyone. Once Scott had left the room, Jean had given him an enigmatic, "Who knows, you two might understand one another better than you had anticipated."

Scott carried one of his bags up to the room for him. He'd gone back to the apartment earlier that day to pack up some of Cal's things. He knocked on the door. When Bobby answered it, Scott frowned and moved back a step. "It hadn't even occurred to me," he said.

Cal and Bobby looked at one another, then at Scott. Cal was irrationally afraid Scott had just remembered that he was a raging homosexual. Bobby raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Well, look at the two of you." They did so. "You could be brothers."

And it was true. They both had short, blonde hair (Cal's a bit more carefully styled), abnormally blue eyes (Bobby's were a bit lighter), strong jawbones, and broad shoulders. Bobby was stockier and more heavily muscled whereas Cal was thin, bordering on malnutrition, and Cal was an inch or two taller, but the resemblance was uncanny.

Bobby smiled. "Weird. What are your powers?" He recognized the eyes as a mutant trait.

"I control water."

"I control ice. Go figure." He reached out a hand and Cal shook it.

Scott set his bag down. "Well, I'll let you two get acquainted." He gave Bobby a wry look. "Maybe this will be a better match, huh?" He turned, leaving Bobby with a slightly pained look.

He shook it off. "Anyway, come on in." Bobby led him into the room and pointed at the empty bed. "You've got that side. The bathroom's through that door, and we share it with the guys on the other side of it."

Cal put his bags on his bed, rubbing at his ribs gingerly. "What did he mean 'a better match'?"

"I had another roommate before you. It was kind of complicated. I don't really want to talk about it right now." He gave Cal a half-smile. "Sorry, it's just a sore topic."

Cal waved it off. "I totally understand. Trust me."

Bobby sat on the bed opposite his. "Like with what happened to your eye?"

He looked down. "Yeah. Like that."


	5. 4: Making Waves in the Murky Deep

Building Neptune

Chapter 4: "Making Waves in the Murky Deep"

"D'you hear?"

John hung from the chin-up bar by his knees, doing crunches. "What was that?"

Toad walked into the training room, taking a seat on the bench press in front of his teammate. "Did y'hear wot happened?"

"Let me guess." He grunted slightly as he curled up again. "Oprah's given some new cars to homeless children and members of her studio audience."

"Yeh, y'so fuckin' clever. Remember tha' kid we checked out a few weeks ago?"

John sighed and flipped down off the bar. "The cute one?" He grabbed his towel and wiped at the sweat on his face and bare torso. His hair was soaked and he reeked like a used sock.

Toad snorted. "If y'say so. But, yeh, tha' one, th'battered housewife fairy." He leaned back on the bench and, with a cursory glance at the considerable weights, lifted and lowered it. "Spot me."

John rolled his eyes and wandered to the other side of the bench. "What about him?"

"Well, turns out 'bout a week ago he got into it with th'boyfriend again an' killed 'im. Triggered a secondary mutation an' all. I hear he ripped th'water right out of his body. Freaky shit, huh? Pretty cool, too, if y'ask me." His voice strained as he pushed the weight up.

"I guess you underestimated him. He grew a pair after all."

Toad barked a cruel laugh and lowered the weight back down. "Hardly. His mutation an' instincts had t'defend him in th'end, 'cause he wouldn't."

John shook his head. "I think you have to want it a little bit for something like that to happen."

"Wantin' it an' doin' it are two entirely diff'rent things, mate."

"Still, shouldn't we look into his case again?"

"You jus' wanna sign him on so you've someone t'fuck withou' leavin' th'Island," Toad teased.

John made a face at him. "Well it is pretty slim pickings around here."

"C'mon, admit it. Y'just lookin' for Blondie-Bear, take two."

"You shut the fuck up before I char broil you." John's face was suddenly very serious.

Toad actually shut up for a moment, looking elsewhere and hefting the weight silently. "Well, s'no use anyway. Looks like th'X-Fucks have 'im now. Dunno wot th'pretty pansies want with some flamin' bar fly, though. I didn' think they approved of tha' shit."

John leaned on the bench, looking down at Toad as he lowered the weight. "You do know that you just called them gay and claimed that they're homophobic all in the same sentence, right?"

"You would know, Johnny. How'd they feel abou' you chasin' dick wherever you could get it?"

"_They_ didn't know about it," he answered, sneering, "because it was none of _their_ business who I fucked. But they're all about that equality shit, just not the slutting around part. They'll probably try to reform him, make him some wholesome, button-up, no-sex-before-civil-union fag."

"I don' see tha' happenin' anytime soon. From wha' I heard, it sounded like th'ponce had more than slutted around. Th'boyfriend said somethin' abou' doin' it f'cash."

"Well either they've got the best conversion ever or he'll just have to keep his mouth shut about it. Trust me, once they know that stuff, they won't let it be."

"Really, no one picked up on you bein' a poofter?"

"Really. I'm not exactly flamboyant, you know."

Toad grinned at him cruelly. "C'mon, even with y'porkin' th'popsicle, no one knew?"

John glared at him for a moment. "You know, one of these days, you ought to learn how to speak proper fucking English. I can't understand a word you say." He turned and stalked toward the door. "Spot yourself, fuckhead."

"Is he all settled in, then?" Jean didn't look up from her grading as Scott walked in.

"Yeah. They seemed to get along alright at first impressions."

"I thought they might."

Scott leaned against her desk. "I'm worried about this one."

"I'm sure Bobby will take good care of him. He's been through a lot, but he'll work through it."

He sighed and paced toward the student desks. "No, it's not him I'm worried about. I'm worried about him being _here_. I don't see this ending well."

She looked up from her papers, frowning. "And why is that? He's a nice boy, Scott."

"I'm not saying he isn't." He leaned on a desk in the front row, staring at her desk. "The world as he's known it so far is morally ambiguous at best."

"The world _is_ morally ambiguous. That's why we have rules here, to solidify those morals a bit."

"I'm just saying that he's never going to be like the rest of these kids."

"Is this about his sexual orientation?"

"No, it's about him being sexually oriented. He won't be able to remove that aspect from himself, Jean. On top of that, he's experienced a lot of wrongs that he hasn't been properly angry about yet, and it's going to come to the surface eventually."

Jean pursed her lips. "I don't like what you're getting at."

He walked over to her desk, his voice soft. "He's already killed someone. Even if it was an accident, it opens a gateway. It'll seem easy for him to do a lot of bad things because, in his mind, he's already done the worst."

"Scott, that's really not fair." Her expression went cold.

"You know I have a point!"

"No, I don't. I think you're overreacting."

"And I think you're setting us up for another John Allerdyce!"

They both went quiet for a long moment.

Jean looked back down at her grading. "That wasn't anyone's fault."

He scoffed and backed away from the desk. "Of course it was! That kid was trouble—I told you that from the beginning. He was detrimental to the school, to society, and to the students."

"We're done talking about this."

Scott almost laughed. He shook his head and turned toward the door. "Fine."

Once he'd moved in, Cal got the grand tour of the mansion from Bobby. He seemed like a nice enough guy, maybe too nice, he thought at first. He had about a million and one things to say about the kitchen, but had no clue about the important things, like who was responsible for those funky orange curtains or how much the school had forked over for the huge oriental rug outside the Professor's office.

"What about the Professor?"

"He left a few days before you got here. Jean said he was making arrangements for a new student. You, I guess."

"So what's he like?" Cal's eyes travelled along the ornate woodwork in the front hallway. "Professor Xavier, sounds like some stuffy old British man."

Bobby shrugged. "Well, he can be stuffy, but he's pretty cool. Really smart."

"He's loaded, right? I mean, obviously, from looking at this place."

"Yeah. I think he was in business before he started this. He's a telepath, you know. Reads people's minds. Only when it's necessary, though, or if you're broadcasting something."

Cal looked more than a little concerned. "Broadcasting?"

He smirked. "Well, if you're fantasizing about nailing a teacher or something, just try to think quietly. It's really not something to worry about." He nudged Cal's arm playfully.

"I'll try to refrain."

"What about you? How long have you had your powers?"

Cal shrugged. "A while now. Since I was thirteen."

"Yeah, I got mine around then. Are you any good with them?"

"What do you mean?"

Bobby sat down on a window seat at the end of the hall. "I mean, have you trained much? For control, endurance, things like that."

"Oh." Cal hesitated. He sat down. "Nope. I didn't know you really had to fine tune it like that. I mean, I just think about it, and the water does what I want. Why do I need more than that?"

"Well, I used to start making ice when I got nervous. It can be a little dangerous if you're..." He arched his eyebrows meaningfully. "…you know…"

"Boning," Cal supplied.

"Yeah. That." He blushed a bit. "Yeah, well, training helped with that. And then we've got a team here, the X-Men. The teachers are all on it. They go out and use their powers to help save mutants from bad humans and humans from bad mutants. That sort of thing. I'm a Junior X-Man now, so I'm training to be on the team. You have to be really good with your powers to work with them."

"What do you mean, 'bad mutants'?"

"Have you ever heard of the Brotherhood of Mutants?"

Cal frowned. "The mutant power group? The one with the crazy old queer with the weird hat."

Bobby laughed. "Yeah, that group. And I dunno if I'd go around calling Magneto a queer."

"No straight man wears a purple cape. Just saying."

He shook his head in amusement. "Anyway. They pull their crazy wipe-out-the-human-race stunts every once in a while and the X-Men have to step in to stop them."

"Why would they do that? I mean, we're mutants. We're on the mutant side."

"That's not how it works. It's not just humans against mutants. It's hate against acceptance."

"I guess so."

"And besides, training is a lot of fun."

"Now that's a good answer. Dr. Grey said you had good training rooms."

"Definitely. Younger students need teacher supervision, but you should be fine as long as you're with me. We could check it out if you want."

Cal grinned. "Yeah. That sounds good."


	6. 5: Hauling Out from the High Seas

Building Neptune

Chapter 5: "Hauling Out from the High Seas"

"Why am I coming here?"

Jean sighed. "Cal, you've had a traumatic experience. You killed someone, albeit unintentionally. That alone would warrant some sessions. On top of that, you have what seems to be a long history of abuse. You need to figure out why you've fallen into these situations and how to deal with them."

He slouched against the couch cushions. "It wasn't like that."

"Then what was it like?"

He huffed, not sure what she wanted to hear. "It was like…he saved me."

She watched him carefully. She was always watching him carefully. "From what?"

"From how I'd been living." Jean waited for him to continue, so after a moment, he did. "I was thirteen when I started living on my own, Jean. How do you think I got by?"

"Are you saying you were selling yourself?"

He laughed bitterly. "It doesn't work like that. I was letting myself be sold."

Jean nodded, expression neutral, non-judgmental. "You had a pimp?"

"Yeah." He fidgeted with his shirt sleeves. "He caught me my first night out, trying to sell it myself on his turf. I didn't know how it really worked." He swallowed hard. "He kicked the shit out of me. Told me I was his property now, I'd work when he told me to, and I'd bring him seventy percent."

"And you stayed with him?"

Cal gave her a pleading look. "It doesn't work like that. You aren't in charge. You're not a kid. You're not even a person. You're income. These guys have guns and power and they don't give a shit who gets hurt. You can be good and sell it by yourself or…"

She waited for him to continue before prompting him. "Or what, Cal?"

He fidgeted for another moment. "Or you end up in a room somewhere, full of guys." His voice went soft. "And...they do whatever they want. And you lay there. And you take it. And if you're lucky, you pass out sooner rather than later." He pressed his sleeve to his good eye quickly and cleared his throat. "So you do what you're told, okay? You do whatever he tells you to do."

Jean leaned forward, placed her hand over his and squeezed gently. There was nothing she could say. "How long did you live like that?"

"Two and a half years." He smiled softly. "And then Matt came."

xxxxx

Bobby loaned him some sweats. Scott had brought Cal's things from his and Matt's apartment, but his pants were generally selected because of how they made his ass look, not how much movement they allowed. Once they had "suited up," as Bobby called it (and Cal thought that was cute in a totally condescending way), they took the elevator down to the lower levels and headed for the Danger Room.

"So do you have a mutant name?" Bobby opened the Danger Room doors with a swipe card.

"Like what, Magneto? I thought that was just for fanatics."

"No, it's sort of a rite of passage, you know? It's about embracing your identity. Plus, it's useful on the field—gives you some anonymity."

"I guess. I just never thought about it much. What's yours?"

"Iceman."

Cal gave a slightly pained smile. "Cool?"

"I know, it's not very creative. I picked it when I was fourteen. You should think of one."

"Well, no offense, but if I do, it sure as hell won't be Waterman." He leaned against the control panel while Bobby swiped his card again to start the computer up.

"We'll start out nice and easy, so you can get a feel for it, and because you're still busted up." Cal rolled his good eye. "Okay, we'll both go against the computer. Let's put ourselves near a water source, and our enemies will be minimally armed." He punched a few buttons and stepped back from the controls.

"So it's all, like, holograms or something?"

"Or something. It's all fake, but you can still get knocked around pretty good in there. I know your ribs are still healing. Take it easy and you let me know if you need out, okay?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine." He followed Bobby through the sliding door beside the controls and into a large, white and gray room.

"Computer, initiate sequence," Bobby called.

The room seemed to quiver for a moment before morphing completely. Suddenly, they stood on a windy shoreline, just in front of a dock. A boat was tethered to the end and two more were approaching. A digital voice came on the intercom. "Objective: subdue enemies, procure the red flag."

Bobby stepped close to his side and murmured, "It'll probably be on one of the later boats. Just keep knocking them down until we can get to them."

"Let's get to it. Keep on my left if you can, alright? I've got a pretty big blind spot." He held out a hand, churning the water under the dock, making it sway slightly. Muscular men started climbing out of the docked boat—all humans, it seemed. With a flick of his fingers, a wave rushed up over the side of the dock, knocking the first few off their feet. He started down the dock.

"I'll go around from the other side." Bobby made an ice slide for himself that went off the left side of the dock and around by the boat.

A man on the dock pulled out a handgun and fired a few shots at the ice slide, cracking it and nearly sending Bobby into the water. Cal immediately sent a wave over the side of the boat, knocking the man into the sea. He churned the waves over him, keeping him under.

"Cal! Only subdue! We don't kill if we don't have to!"

"He was shooting at us!"

"Doesn't matter! Let him up!" A man managed to fight his way through the water surging over the dock and made a lunge from Cal's left, knocking him onto the dock, his upper half hanging over the side. Sharp pain surged through his ribs. He brought the ocean surging over the both of them, trying to wash the attacker off, but he had a good grip on the boy's shirt.

Just as he was about to call for help, he felt cold swoop past his face and the man cried out, pulling off Cal and reaching down for his frozen legs. Cal managed to twist away, climbing from the dock to one of Bobby's ice slides. The first boat was nearly empty, but the second had just arrived, three more shooters on the side. "Bobby!" Cal brought a vertical sheet of water up between them and the boat, and it froze in place. Bobby grinned at him, this All-American Boy Scout sort of grin, and it was weird, but it didn't make Cal feel out of place.

The second boat went down a bit more easily, and they managed to board it long enough to know that the flag wasn't on it. Under Cal's guidance, the water brought the third boat careening into theirs, and Bobby froze the two boats together so they could board. Two guns appeared from the left side of the boat. With an extension of his hand, Bobby froze them both, along with their owners' hands. He hurried off to knock the both of them out while Cal went right to search for the flag. He rounded around the other side of the boat when a third man came out of a door behind him, from below deck. He caught the boy around his neck, growling in his ear, "Well look what we have here, pretty boy."

The man's chest was pressed against his back.

Matt's hands were on his hips.

No, he needed to get the water up, over the deck. The waves started churning. "Causing trouble, aren't we?" The man snickered, his arm tightening around his neck.

Matt's hands were on his belt. His breath was on the back of his neck.

No, don't freeze. Focus.

Matt. "Street urchin whore."

He was shaking. Fucking shaking.

"Cal!"

"Callie-baby…"

"Cal! Use your powers!" Bobby stood in front of him, confused.

"…show you who you belong to…"

He felt that cold brush past his side again, and the man backed off. Bobby charged past and gave the guy a solid right hook. "Computer, end sequence!"

They were back in the white room. Cal still hadn't moved from where he was standing. He felt sick. A hand on his shoulder, he vaguely registered Bobby standing in front of him. "Are you alright?"

He blinked, swallowed, tried to find a voice. He managed to nod. His ribs ached. He felt pathetic.

Bobby smiled. "Hey, it's fine, okay? We did pretty well." He wrapped his arm loosely around Cal's shoulders and guided him to the door. "It's probably getting late anyway. We should get to bed." It was obvious that he was just trying to play it off and break the awkwardness, so Cal didn't feel so embarrassed. Oddly, it was working.

xxxx

By the time they got back to their room, Cal started to feel like he could breathe again. He watched Bobby tug off his shirt before remembering to give him privacy. He turned to face his side of the room, pulling his own clothes off sluggishly. He opened one of the bags Scott had brought for him, pulling out a fresh pair of briefs first and putting them on. He fished around for a t-shirt, pulled one out, and froze. Of course Scott wouldn't have known which clothes were his and which were Matt's. He and Matt hadn't even known sometimes—they shared often enough. The t-shirt was a bit larger than one of Cal's, black with "NYU" on the front in white letters. He'd seen Matt wearing it just a few weeks earlier, stretched out on the couch with an MCAT study guide balanced on his knees and a pencil eraser between his lips. Cal's hand trembled and he heard himself start to cry. The salt stung in his bad eye.

"Hey," he heard behind him. Bobby's voice was soft and low. "What's going on?"

And now he really felt like a moron, standing there in his underpants crying over a fucking piece of clothing. He dropped it and sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. "It's not my shirt."

He didn't see Bobby's look of confusion, but he knew it was there.

"It's my boyfriend's," he said. "Or, was my boyfriend's." He peeked over his hands. "He's dead."

Bobby's expression softened. Their eyes both had that unnatural glow about them, but Bobby's were sweeter than his, baby blue. "I'm sorry." He hesitated, and then crouched down in front of Cal's bag, digging for a moment before procuring another t-shirt, plain and purple. "Is this one yours?"

Cal sniffled and wiped at his good eye with the back of his hand. "Yeah. Thanks."

Bobby handed it over with a kind smile. "No problem."

He tugged the t-shirt on over his head. "Sorry I keep freaking out."

"Don't worry about it. We'll try the Danger Room again sometime, alright?" Bobby stood up slowly and walked back to his side of the room.

Cal watched him, then stood up and headed for the bathroom to wash his face. He paused in the doorway. Bobby was sliding into bed. "Goodnight, Bobby."

Bobby smiled at him. "Goodnight, Cal."


	7. 6: Return to the Rapids

Building Neptune

Chapter Six: "Return to the Rapids"

Jean sat back in her chair. "Tell me about him."

"Matt was one of my customers. Some of his friends bought me for him when he got into the internship program he wanted. I think it was mostly a joke, to make him uncomfortable. I was lying on his bed when he got into the room, naked like they told me to. He kicked them out and told me to get up. He asked my age, and I said eighteen. He said 'Bullshit,' and he looked me over, fucking _inspected_ me. I thought it was just some weird thing, you know? But he was looking for bruises, looking at how much my ribs stuck out. He asked the last time I'd eaten. I lied and said just a day ago. Then he asked the last time I'd seen a doctor and I almost laughed in his face."

"He had me stay the night, but we didn't do anything. I tried to. God, I tried to. I mean, he was this gorgeous older man that actually seemed to give a shit…I thought he was going to _Pretty Woman_ me, and I guess he sort of did. The next day, he had one of his med school buddies give me a physical, STD test, blood counts, the whole deal." Cal paused and frowned.

"What did they say?"

"Chlamydia, anemia and malnutrition, unset breaks…anal tearing." He grimaced at the memory. "But I just remember being so shocked…so fucking shocked that I wasn't positive."

"You were lucky. I'm sure a lot of boys in your position weren't."

Cal shook his head. "Most of the guys I knew, hell, most of the girls I knew…I just assumed I would be too. Then I found out I'm not and all the sudden my life seemed...long, like it wasn't already over. I could actually do something with it."

"Was that a bit scary?"

He nodded rapidly. "Matt got me treated for the Chlamydia, gave me something for the tearing, and told me I had to stay with him until I gained some weight. We didn't do anything for almost a month while I was living with him. I was just about _dying._ He said he was trying to do the right thing and not take advantage of me, but I was so in love with him by then…I couldn't help myself. I crawled into his bed in the middle of the night and begged him to fuck me. I told him I wanted to have sex with someone that I actually wanted. Which was true, yeah, but I was still being a manipulative little bitch." Cal laughed, and Jean gave a half-hearted laugh too, playing along.

"So it was good at first? The relationship?"

He looked up at her. "For about four months. And then that winter, my pimp found me again." His expression went dark. "He threatened to kill me, to kill Matt, if I didn't do what he said. I was still living with Matt, but I was sneaking out of the apartment at night to go work bars. He found out a few weeks later when I gave him crabs."

Jean leaned her elbow on her desk. "Matt was angry?"

"He was pissed. He started going off about how he'd trusted me, how he'd taken me in, given me everything, and he was right. He was completely right. I was fucking around on him."

She frowned. "Cal, you were a scared kid. You thought you were protecting him."

Cal shook his head. "I was an idiot. I should have told him."

"Did he hit you then?"

He shrugged. "He just shoved me, pushed me against the wall and asked why he shouldn't just toss me out on the streets like the whore I am…was." He shifted uncomfortably. "I begged him to give me another chance. I told him I didn't know what to do about the pimp. He told me he knew a guy, but that's all he would say. I never saw my pimp again after that."

Jean pursed her lips. "What did you think about that?"

"I mean, I was grateful, but at the same time it was intimidating. He'd scared off the one person that had scared me the most. I thought, 'Well, I'd better stay on his good side.'"

"That's when you started being afraid of him."

He sighed. "Not always. Just when I made him angry. Which happened more and more." He shifted in his seat and ran a hand through his hair. "At the end of the year, he started his internship, and it was really stressful for him. They had him working twelve hour shifts, sometimes more. I didn't want him to think I was just sponging off of him, so I found that job at the club. He wasn't very happy about it, though. After the thing with my pimp, he got really possessive. He didn't like me talking to other guys, was always telling me that I was his, that I was lucky someone like him could love a whore like me."

She cocked her head at him. "Did you sense something wasn't right with him?"

"That's the thing." Cal's voice went soft. "It wasn't him. It was me."

"Cal, you can't blame yourself for being victimized…"

"No, I mean it! Before me, Matt only had a few boyfriends, all healthy, long-term relationships. I was the wild card. I was the one who'd been selling my ass since I was thirteen. He never would have been like that if I didn't make him so paranoid."

Jean shook her head and leaned toward him. "Whether or not you were a special circumstance doesn't change the fact that he _chose_ to hurt you, to take advantage of you."

"He didn't take advantage! He saved me! I was the one that wanted him!"

She sighed and sat back. "Cal, in cases like yours, where someone has been victimized multiple times, there is something we call 'patterns of abuse.' Someone who has been abused once is more likely to be abused a second time, or even a third."

He frowned. "Like, people want to hurt me more than other people?"

"No, it's not that you make other people want to hurt you. It's something that becomes ingrained in your own mentality."

"Like, I want people to hurt me."

Jean pursed her lips for a moment. "Not exactly. The primary reason is that once you've been victimized, you're less likely to put a stop to it if it happens again, because you think that's just how it is. At the same time, you could also be drawn to or seek out relationships with unbalanced power dynamics, where one person has a lot of control over another."

"Why would I want that?"

"For some people, it's because that's what they know. It's familiar to them, and the familiar is comforting even if it's harmful. I suspect that for you it was because you've gone so long without control over your own situation. You said you felt scared after you found out you were negative. Your pimp had dictated every aspect of your life for over two years. The prospect of running your own life after that is pretty scary."

Cal chewed on his lower lip. "But I didn't know Matt would hurt me at first…"

"Yes, but he was in a position of power over you. He made you stay at his house, told you to get better rather than letting you decide. It was a positive influence at first, but he was still dominating you. Instead of taking control back for yourself, you let Matt take the reins."

"I loved Matt. It wasn't just me needing someone to run my life for me."

Jean smiled sadly at him. "I believe you did love him. He made you feel safe. But I think the reason he made you feel safe was because you were more comfortable in a position of submission."

He frowned at her for a moment. "Are you talking about sex?"

She laughed. "No, not in particular, though I'm sure that played its part as well."

"Y'know, 'cause I was…" Cal murmured, not sure if she wanted to know all that.

"Sexual roles can be very indicative of emotional roles in a relationship." She studied him for a moment. "Did sex ever take on an aspect of violence with him?"

His eyebrows shot up and he shrunk back in his seat a bit. "What do you mean, like, bondage?"

"Or anything that you perceived as violent—roughness, biting, acting out violent situations…"

Cal shrugged. "I mean, yeah. We were kind of adventurous, I guess." He paused. "He used to tie my hands sometimes. And then there were the times he was mad at me…"

"And I'm guessing that was more than acting out violence."

"Well, yeah. I mean, we'd shout and he'd hit me and I'd start apologizing…that's always how it went…but sometimes he'd tell me—tell me to beg him for forgiveness, make it up to him. He'd tell me to show him how much I loved him."

"He made you have sex with him."

"He made me beg him to fuck me. Or to let me suck him off. And he'd be pretty rough with me then. Hold me down, hit me. One time he choked me."

"That sounds pretty scary."

"Yeah, but then afterward, he'd say he was sorry and hold me and I'd feel safe again."

"Was that what you thought would happen the night he died?"

Cal swallowed heavily. "No. No, that had only happened once before, when I was pissed enough that I wouldn't apologize. It was a few months ago, he freaked out at me in front of people, chased a customer away from the club. When we got home, he started yelling and I started yelling. He hit me, and I went into our room and started to pack my stuff."

"You were going to leave him?"

He laughed. "No. I just wanted him to think I would. I thought he'd do the apologizing. But instead he just got madder." He stared at his knees. "He tried to get me to beg him, and when I wouldn't, he pushed me onto the bed. He told me that I was just a dumb whore and I was lucky to have someone as good as him. He told me…he told me I was his and I needed to remember that."

Jean tried not to look as hurt as she felt for him. "He raped you?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"Did things change after that?"

"Sort of. I had to stay in bed for a couple days afterward. He would barely look at me. After I felt better, he started being really nice—nicer than usual—when he wasn't mad. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde only Dr. Jekyll was John Cusack in _Say Anything_ and Mr. Hyde was Marlon Brando in _A Streetcar Named Desire_."

"Did it feel like things had reached a boiling point?"

"I dunno. Not at the time, but looking back…yeah."

"Did he call you names like that often?"

He nodded. "Yeah, always the same deal. I'm a stupid whore, I'm a slut, he's better than me."

"And did you believe him?" She cocked her head to the side curiously.

He glanced up at her, then shrugged uncomfortably.

"Cal, the reason we're talking about these things is so you can figure out what led you into these situations, so you don't repeat them in the future. One way abusers control their victims is by breaking down their self-esteem, making them think they deserve to be hit. Your self-esteem has taken quite a bit of damage, and we need to start repairing it if you're going to have healthy relationships."

He chewed on his lower lip. "Yeah, okay. I mean, he wasn't wrong, though. I was a whore. And I'm not exactly Einstein here."

Jean laughed gently. "Look, the hustling wasn't your fault. You were put in a bad situation. And you're not stupid. You just haven't been in school for quite some time. Which is why I would like you to take classes here at the mansion."

Cal grimaced a little. "By 'quite some time' you know we're talking since, like, middle school, right? I'm way too far behind to catch up now."

"Of course you're not. A lot of kids here are behind. You can start with lower level classes and work with tutors to catch up. I'm sure Bobby would be happy to help you with math." Jean turned to her desk and pulled out a few papers. "Do these practice tests tonight, and we'll place you this weekend. You can start Monday."

Cal took the tests, holding them out like they might be toxic. "Sounds…great."

xxx

Jean watched as Scott went about his regular nighttime regimen, brushing his teeth and washing his face. They'd been together for four years now—an eternity, it seemed, and had known each other since young adolescence. They had fallen into a sort of rhythm. It was almost second nature, their relationship. Even arguments were dealt with in the same way, their triggers and boiling points so well mapped that it was like playing chess. If Scott brought up Topic A, Jean could either 1) refute Topic A, 2) counter with Topic B, or 3) ignore the move altogether. He knew her options and she knew what his responses to each might be. It usually played out differently than it had before, but the end result was never surprising. They would reach a checkmate or a stalemate, and that would be the end of it. They were good sports. Shake hands, say 'good game,' and get on with their lives.

She liked to think it was healthy. She forgot sometimes, though, how bad people will let things become in the name of routine and familiarity.

Scott came back into their room, fishing through his dresser for a clean t-shirt. Jean slid off the bed, moved up behind him, and wrapped her arms around his middle. He stood, tried to glance back at her. "Everything okay?"

Jean leaned her head against his shoulder and kissed his neck. "I worry about it, too."

He turned, pulling her arms up around his neck. He petted her cheek with his thumb. "Worry about what?"

"All of it, the kids. I worry that some of them won't turn out right, like John. I see them in the Danger Room and I wonder if we're training the next Magneto."

"I never meant it like that, Jean. Most of these kids are doing just fine."

She leaned against his chest. "No, they're not. Most of these kids are troubled in one way or another. They all have their sore spots, their secrets, Scott. They all have the potential to become something like that. But we keep doing what we're doing."

"What else would we do?"

"Exactly."


	8. 7: Slipping into the Stream

Building Neptune

Chapter Seven: "Slipping into the Stream"

John had a problem with leaving well enough alone. At least, that's what Toad would tell him. He went on his own time, though, so it was really none of Toad's fucking business if he went to Xavier's. A phone call to his office, using a fake accent, assured him that Professor Xavier had not yet returned from his engagements in New York City.

He staked the school out for half a day in a tree, waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Yes, it was technically stalking, but John was a terrorist. Stalking was hardly a drop in the bucket. Finally, just around noon when the rest of the students were inside, he saw a flash of blonde hair at the rear entrance. Cal was wandering away from the school, back toward the gardens. John grinned.

Climbing out the branch he'd been sitting on, he jumped over to the wrought iron fence that went around the school, and then dropped down to the grass silently. He moved toward the back door so it would look like he'd come from the school. He called out to him. "Cal?"

Cal turned, frowning for a moment, and John wondered if he even remembered him. He strode toward the gardens after him, grinning and looking as friendly as he could. "You probably don't remember me. We met at that club a couple weeks ago."

"I remember you." Cal looked away toward the gardens. He jerked his head for John to walk with him, and he did. "I never got your name."

"John. I didn't expect to see you here of all places."

"You neither. Are you with Xavier's?"

John gave an easy smile and admired the foliage. They'd put in more irises since he'd left. "I used to go here. I'm just stopping by to visit."

"Then when you talked to me before—you weren't talking about this place?"

"No. I'm with a different organization now. The ideology is a bit different. This place is great and all, but I'm more comfortable now than when I was here."

Cal stopped at a bench near the daffodils and sat. "Why is that? I just moved here, so I don't know much about it."

John sat next to him. "They're really straight-laced here, rules and uniformity and all that. I needed more room to breathe and misbehave and take on responsibility. This place always made me feel like something was wrong with me for wanting that."

"I guess I can see that. It's hard getting used to curfews and no drinking and going to class. It's been a while since I've had anything like that."

"A lot of the kids here, they had a rough time manifesting, but before that, they had nice, middle-class, cookie-cutter families that loved them and took care of them. Most of them went straight from their houses in the suburbs to the mansion. They just don't get it."

Cal nodded thoughtfully and leaned back in the bench. "You haven't asked about Matt."

"Your boyfriend?"

"Yeah. You were so nosy before, I'm a little surprised."

"You were in trouble then. Nosing in was the responsible thing to do. You seem safe enough now. Would you like me to ask about him?"

"He's dead."

John went quiet for a moment, looking down at his hands in his lap. "I'm sorry."

"You're only the second person to say that. And the first didn't know what he'd done to me."

"Idiotic or not, you were staying with him for a reason, I suppose."

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For getting it." Cal reached over the back of the bench, his fingers brushing the tops of the flowers. "You haven't asked about my eye either." The bandages were lighter, but still covered the eye.

"Tell me about your eye."

"Matt swung a candlestick at my head."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. He was going to kill me, so I killed him first—accidentally, but still."

"Are you going to be able to see out of it?"

"I just said I killed my boyfriend."

John leaned an arm on the back of the bench and pillowed his head on it, staring at Cal thoughtfully. "Totally justifiably."

A pause. "I'll probably lose some of my sight in that eye. Most of the damage was to the surrounding bone, though."

"And I'm sure Dr. Grey is keeping close tabs on your recovery." He smiled.

Cal rolled his good eye. "She's got me in therapy."

John groaned, sitting up and laughing. "Of course she does. God forbid if they didn't know what went on in all of our heads, right?"

"I don't know. It's sort of nice to work through some stuff. She's very…stiff, though, when it comes to certain subjects."

"Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll?"

"Pretty much. I mean, just about all of my issues have to do with sex, so she constantly either has this fake poker face on or she's pursing her lips and sighing. Even at the good parts."

"Well, you know she's engaged to Summers, right? A couple like that does it with the lights out and their shirts still on. She hears bondage and jumps to heroin-fuelled orgies."

Cal laughed. They lapsed into silence. "So why are you out here with me instead of inside, catching up with your old friends?"

John smirked. "I remembered why I'd left in the first place."

"Does that mean you won't come around again?" Cal had this hesitant, forced half-smile.

"Probably not." John's smirk softened. "I guess you lost my number in the chaos?"

"Yeah, probably."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen and pad of paper. He scribbled his number, tore the sheet off and passed it over. "Give me a call sometime. You can try visiting my world for a bit." He stood and gave Cal one last glance before heading back around the mansion. He'd hop the fence once he was out of Cal's line of sight.

xxx

The Professor returned in a limo early the next morning. Most of the students left the breakfast table to greet him in the front hall, Bobby among them. Cal lingered just inside the doorway to the dining room, watching as he nodded and smiled politely. He seemed friendly, but the students were formal with him, nearly stiff. This man had probably saved his ass from prison—and his ass would not have done well in prison—but he still felt a sense of trepidation at the sight of him.

On cue, Xavier looked up and met his eyes from across the room, a knowing look on his face. _I would very much like to meet with you in my office after breakfast._ The words echoed in his head, and he barely stopped himself from looking around for the speaker. His eyes flicked to the floor, then back up at the Professor. He nodded quickly and retreated back to the breakfast table.

When he got to Professor Xavier's office, the doors opened of their own accord. The old man smiled at him from behind his desk. "Come in, Mr. Hogan."

If he hadn't already been nervous, the name threw him off. His last name reminded him of his family, reminded him of things he'd rather not think about. He hadn't used it in a while, preferring to exclude his last name or, occasionally, adopt Matt's last name, Cameron. He supposed that wouldn't go over so well anymore.

"Is there a name you would prefer I call you?" the Professor asked, and that threw him off, too, knowing that he was in his head like that.

Cal shuffled into the room. The doors closed behind him. "Uh, Calin is fine. Or Cal. That's what everyone calls me."

Xavier smiled. "That's a good, strong name, Calin. From the Irish, it means, 'Powerful Warrior.'"

"It's what my parents were expecting, I guess. Not exactly what they got."

"I suppose we'll see in time whether or not that's true." He stared at the boy for a moment, then motioned toward a chair. "Please, sit."

He lowered himself into a chair, tense and trying not to jiggle his leg. "So what did you want to see me about? Uh, sir?"

"Well, I figured we should be properly introduced. So, as you know, I am Professor Charles Xavier. We're very glad to have you here, Calin."

Cal nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. Um, nice to meet you, I guess."

The Professor smiled gently. "How are you liking your stay here so far?"

"It's good, I guess. I'm starting classes now, so that sort of sucks." He froze, kicking himself internally. He stammered momentarily. "Uh, I mean, it's not—I'm glad I can go and all, and I meant stinks, not sucks, but, uh, I didn't mean that either."

Xavier held up a hand. "Relax. You're allowed to dislike school. I am a teacher, after all, and I hold no illusions about my pupils' enthusiasm."

Cal tried to laugh. He tried to relax. He managed to lower his shoulders half an inch.

"What about the living situation? Are you adjusting well?"

"Yeah, my roommate's really nice. Bobby Drake. He's really cool about…well, everything."

"Everything being what, exactly?"

"You know, rooming with a gay guy for starters. And, uh." He hesitated, staring at his hand as he traced lines on his knee with his finger. "Uh, well, I'm still kind of freaking out about stuff sometimes. It's getting better, though, I think. But with Matt and everything…"

Xavier looked thoughtful. "Jean told me you've been speaking with her regularly. Is that helping with the 'freaking out' at all?"

Cal shrugged. "I guess? I mean, I still miss him and stuff, that's not gonna change."

"No, I suppose not." He smiled and turned his chair to his bookshelf, scanning through it for a moment before pulling a book down. "I think you might enjoy this one." He turned back and passed the book to Cal.

"A Separate Peace?"

"It's a classic."

"I'm not exactly a big reader."

"It's well within your reading ability. Give it a try."

Cal turned the book over once, then looked up at the Professor uncertainly. "Thanks."

"Feel free to come by my office any time, Calin. My door is always open."

Taking that as his permission to leave, Cal stood and forced himself to not run from the room.


	9. 8: Fleeing the Fishbowl

Building Neptune

Chapter Eight: "Fleeing the Fishbowl"

Dr. Grey turned the lights down, leaving the set at the other end of the medical lab on. "Your eye will need to adjust." She returned to the medical table, where he was sitting. "Ready?"

"Let's do it."

She carefully peeled the tape away from his forehead and cheek. Cal cringed. "There we go."

He blinked his eye open slowly. It felt weird. His vision slowly adjusted. He closed his right eye experimentally. "I can hardly see out of it." He carefully controlled the tremor in his voice.

Jean frowned and held his chin, turning his face so she could see. "Is your vision blurry?"

"Just really dark."

"Darker than the other eye?"

"Yeah."

She walked back to the light switch and turned the lights on, one set at a time. "And now?"

Cal closed one eye and then the other, looking around. "A lot better, but it's still darker."

"Can you see clearly, though?"

"Kind of like it's foggy. Does that make sense?"

Jean nodded and moved back to inspect the eye again. "It might be the scar tissue. There's not much we can do about that, but it might clear up a bit with time." She pulled a pen out of the pocket of her lab coat. She made a few notes on her clipboard, and then held up the pen. "Watch the pen without turning your head and let me know when it goes in and out of your vision." She started at his far right, a bit behind him, and moved forward slowly.

"I can see it now." The pen moved around in front of him and left. At about a forty-five degree angle from his left eye, he said, "I can't see it anymore."

She frowned and lowered the pen to the clipboard, scribbling something down. "You've lost your peripheral vision in that eye."

"Per-what?"

"Peripheral vision, seeing out of the corner of your eye." She set the clipboard down and looked at him, lips pursed. She sighed. "This is sort of what we expected. You know that."

Cal nodded. "Do you have a mirror?"

She brought him one from a drawer in her desk and passed it to him.

It wasn't a pretty sight. The whole area was still bruised greenish-brown. He had tape over a "T" of stitches at his temple, where they'd had to pull the skin back over his skull. A smaller set of stitches ran just under his eye, where the doctors had gone in to fix his cheek bone. Cal grimaced. "Will it scar?"

"Yes, but I'll give you some cream to minimize it."

"Fuck."

"Cal, you really need to start watching your language."

He looked up at her, looking almost affronted because, really? She was bringing this up now, when his face was a mess and he could hardly see out of one eye?

"Especially in front of the younger students."

He laughed in mild disbelief. "It's not like they haven't heard it before."

"Still, you have to set an example. And it's just good manners."

"Dr. Grey, out of all the terrible things people do, all the terrible things I've done, I hardly think a few swears are going to matter in the big picture."

She smiled at him, a tight-lipped smile. "Regardless, I'm asking you to try to censor yourself."

Cal stared at her for a moment. He gave her an equally fake smile. "Sure, of course."

"Seriously, we can step things up a bit. I've got two eyes now, after all."

Bobby tugged him into the Danger Room, rolling his eyes. "Don't be stupid. We'll start out as slow as we need to go. No hand-to-hand. It'll be easier on your ribs anyway."

"My ribs are practically good as new."

"Liar."

Cal stuck his tongue out at his roommate.

"Computer, initiate sequence."

They were on a high riverbank, opposite a group of men armed with semi-automatics. The objective was to force the opposite team into retreat. They settled flat on the grass behind the cover of some rock. It was so not challenging it wasn't even funny. Bobby was holding back, shooting ice periodically across the gap and ducking down. Cal tried to play along and hold back for a bit, but after about fifteen minutes of tedious exchanges of fire, he got fed up.

"Oh, for Christ's sake." He army-crawled out from behind the rock and extended both hands at the river below them.

"What are you doing?"

"Help me or not." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before flicking his arms upward. The river water surged from the riverbed and up the enemy's side of the ravine, clearing the hillside by a few feet before crashing forward. He felt himself quivering at the effort.

"Holy crap." Bobby came up behind him, extending a hand to lace the wave with ice bits, effectively scattering any remaining opponents.

"Objective cleared." The simulation disappeared, leaving Cal on his stomach on the floor, Bobby standing beside him.

"That was…impressive."

Cal twisted to look up at him. "I told you I could handle something tougher."

Bobby reached down and clasped at Cal's hand to pull him to his feet. "Alright, next time we'll kick it up a notch." He tugged him up harder than necessary, pulling Cal too close, their faces a few inches away. They both froze for a moment.

Cal pulled back. "Uh."

But his roommate had already dismissed the moment, smiling like he had before. "Alright, let's get cleaned up. You've got math homework to work on."

He groaned as he trailed after Bobby. "Do I have to? I'm tired now."

"Yeah, you have to." Bobby snorted at him. "Quit bitching."

"Okay, you factor this just like the other ones, but you have to multiply the last number by this first one. Bobby leaned forward on the desk, barely restraining himself from grabbing the notebook and just doing the damn problems himself.

Cal groaned and slumped forward, head on the desk. "I'm never going to remember all of this. I haven't done homework since I was thirteen, and I hardly did it back then."

"Come on. Just give yourself time to adjust. You'll get it."

"I give up. I can't do any more of this tonight." Cal scooted his chair away from the desk.

"Cal, it's due tomorrow!"

He rolled his eyes and stood up. "Oh, who cares? At this rate, I'm not graduating high school until twenty-two. I've got time." He looked at the door. He reached in his pocket and took his hand back out. He walked toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Bobby sighed. "It's almost curfew."

Cal paused in the doorway. "I need…I just need to breathe for a second, okay?"

He walked out, leaving Bobby with a vague sense of déjà vu.

There were a few land lines scattered around the school for students to make personal calls. Cal went for the one in the hallway outside the laundry room, more secluded than the rest. He slipped the paper out of his pocket and turned it over in his hand a few times before he dialed.

"Hello."

"John?"

"Cal." He could hear a smile in John's voice. "I was wondering if you would call."

He sat against the wall next to the phone, twisting the cord around his finger. "Yeah, I've just been crazy busy with classes and all that bullshit."

"How's that bandwagon going?"

Cal laughed quietly and bumped his head back against the wall. "Ugh. It's just…suffocating, you know? Jean's getting on me for swearing, of all things. And it's all rules and deadlines and expectations for this trivial shit—I might just snap."

"Sorry, yeah, it gets like that. People like you and me have a lot of perspective, and most of them just don't get the big picture thing."

"I'm trying. I really want to make it work."

"I think you could. Just don't change yourself to fit the rules. Change the rules to fit you."

"I'm not sure that would go over well."

"You'll figure it out if it's meant to be."

Cal paused and felt his shoulders relax a bit. "Sorry, I didn't call just to bitch."

John laughed. "It's fine, really. I've been there."

"What have you been up to?"

"Oh, just training and some boring work stuff. Things are pretty slow here. You actually just saved me from getting chewed out by my teammate."

"Oh? Over what?"

He snorted. "God only knows—using his gear or something stupid like that. He'll get over it."

"Well I'm glad I could help."

In the distance, Cal heard someone call, "Curfew!"

"Damn it. It's almost eleven. I have to go back to my room soon. My roommate's gonna bitch at me about not finishing my homework."

"Jesus, you need to get out of there."

"Yeah, kind of."

"What time do your classes end on Friday?"

Cal smiled. "Two thirty."

"Meet me outside the front gates at five. Wear something nice, not formal."

He broke into a grin. "Sounds good."

"I'll see you then. Night, Cal."

"Goodnight."

He placed the phone on the receiver and sat there for a moment, grinning like an idiot and, after trying to resist, did a little dance where he sat. He pushed himself to his feet and strolled back to his room, homework and curfew evaporated from his mind.

"Hey, Bobby," he chirped on his way in.

Bobby looked up from his desk, raising an eyebrow. "You're in a better mood."

"Yep." He flounced over to his dresser and started going through his shirts.

"Can I ask why? Not that I'm not happy you are."

Cal held a red button-up up to his chest and turned toward the mirror on the bathroom door. "I have a date on Friday. Does this look too formal?" He cocked his head to the side thoughtfully.

Bobby stood up, walking up behind him. "A date? With who?"

He chewed on his lip for a moment, as if still thinking about the shirt. If John wasn't on great terms with his old school friends, maybe he should keep this quiet. "Just this guy I met in town."

"Oh. Uh, that sounds good. What's he like?"

Cal looked back at him, smirking. "Fucking gorgeous." He turned back to his dresser, pulling out a black t-shirt. "And really sweet. In a realistic sort of way, though. What about this with a scarf?"

Bobby hesitated, and then smiled. "A scarf's too campy for a first date. I like the red shirt."

He looked over at Bobby again, surprised. "Well, look at you." He pulled the red shirt out and put it on a hanger. "Thanks."

"Do your homework, Cal."

He rolled his eyes. "And we were getting along so well…"


	10. 9: Drifting into the Delta

Chapter Nine: "Drifting into the Delta"

"Drake, hand me the grease rag."

Bobby grabbed it off the counter and passed it over to Scott as he slid out from under the car.

"I swear Hank has the worst luck with cars. I won't be able to finish this today." He scrubbed at his hands ineffectually, the rag so mucked up already that he was really just spreading the grease around. He handed it back to Bobby.

"I can change the oil on the BMW so you'll have more time tomorrow."

Scott nodded. "Thanks. I was probably going to put it off anyway." He stood up, a little stiff from lying under the car for so long. "I'm glad you came out here, Bob. I feel like I haven't seen you outside class in ages."

"If you'd lighten up on the homework load, maybe I'd have more time." Bobby gave him a cheeky grin. "Plus, between the extra training and tutoring Cal, it's been kind of crazy."

"How's that going? Tutoring Cal, I mean."

He shrugged. "He's having a hard time. He's really behind, but I think mostly it's that he hasn't done the school thing in so long. He gets frustrated with it pretty easily."

Scott nodded. The kid wasn't doing so well in classes. His homework was rarely on time. "And how's he doing other than that? Are you doing okay rooming together?"

"Yeah, sure. He's a little rough around the edges, but he's a really nice guy. He's still having a hard time with…well, what happened before he came here. He doesn't talk about it too much."

He frowned. "Has he told you anything?"

"Just that his boyfriend died."

Scott sighed and leaned against Hank's truck. "Well, it's good you're getting along, anyway." He hesitated. "It's not weird for you, is it?"

Bobby looked confused for a second, and then got it. "Oh, no."

"That's good. And, hey, at least you two won't be fighting over girls like you and John."

He flinched at the name. "What do you mean?"

"Rogue. Come on, Bobby, I'm not that out of touch. You and John started having problems after Rogue came into the picture. He was jealous, right?"

Bobby was quiet for a moment, weighing his words in his head. "Yeah, he was jealous."

Scott studied him for a moment. He wouldn't make eye contact and he was chewing on the inside of his cheek. "What? Was there something else?"

He took a deep breath and glanced at Scott, then back at the cars behind him. "I just…I don't think it was Rogue he was jealous about."

It took Scott a moment to catch up with his meaning. "You mean?"

"Yeah."

"I never would have guessed."

"He wasn't too open about anything, you know. And he liked girls, too." He hated that he was speaking in past tense, like John had died or something.

"Well, you've got some luck with roommates."

Bobby flinched a little. "It didn't bother me or anything. I mean, he was still just John."

"Yeah, and we see how well 'just John' worked out."

"Does that change how you think of him?" Scott misinterpreted the tremor in his voice, thinking Bobby was afraid he'd forgive John for leaving.

"I'd be lying if I said it didn't, at least a little bit. It changes how I think of him leaving. I don't know if it's for the better or the worse, though. I thought his ego was bruised because she'd picked you over him. But, if it was you he was after, then he was probably more hurt than angry. At the same time, though, he was resenting you for who you are. You could never return those feelings, Bobby."

He nodded quietly, picking some grease from under his thumbnail. "I should get to training, I guess." He headed for the door. "It was nice talking, Mr. Summers."

As soon as Cal put on the red shirt, they decided that it wasn't right. After ten minutes of rifling through his closet, they went back to the black t-shirt. Cal went for the scarf again, but Bobby lunged up behind him and snatched it out of his hands. Chest to Cal's back, he pretended to strangle him with it. "No scarves! You are going to dial it down if it kills you!"

"Oh my God, you are being so weird."

Bobby stepped back and flung the scarf around his own neck. "Am not."

"Are too. What's wrong with you today?"

He clutched a dramatic hand to his chest. "Why, Calin. I'm hurt."

"Seriously, are you high or something?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, Cal, I am not _high_. I'm saving you from yourself."

"Sure."

He finally found a gray vest that Bobby approved of and put it on over the t-shirt. Bobby laughed at him and was entirely unhelpful while he fought his way into a pair of absurdly tight pants. "I'd say you're probably making yourself sterile, but I guess it's a non-issue."

"Hey, I could still have kids. It's called artificial insemination."

"No, it's not that. I just don't think you'd ever have the patience to wait nine whole months for something." He made a face at Cal and leaned against the wall by the mirror.

Cal reached for some consealer to put over the faint remaining bruises and the cuts, but Bobby grabbed it away, insisting, "No, no, no, you are _not_ wearing make-up on a first date." He then proceeded to drape himself over Cal's bed and give himself light/medium-tone war paint.

"I worry about you sometimes."

"Mascara would probably work better. Got any of that?"

Cal lobbed a shoe at him. "What am I, the Avon lady?"

"So do I get to meet this guy? Make sure he's not some creeper?" Bobby rolled onto his stomach, propping his chin in his hands, making a show of his nosiness.

"No. Absolutely not, you psychotic little man-child."

Bobby stuck his tongue out. "You're mean."

"You love me anyway." Cal stopped, afraid he might have overstepped some bound, but his roommate just grinned at him.

"Okay, okay. Go have fun with your hunky date." He shooed him off.

John pulled up in a black Toyota just a few minutes after five. He smiled at Cal and unlocked the door. "Come on, let's get out of here, huh?"

He slid into the passenger seat. "My thoughts exactly. Where are we going, anyway?"

"A restaurant just outside Chelsea." They drove off toward the highway. "You got your bandages off. How's it doing?"

Cal shrugged. "There's a lot of scar tissue, and I lost my, uh, my per…per…" He twirled a finger in the air, searching for the word. "Side-thingy?"

"Peripheral?" John volunteered.

"Yeah, that. Peripheral vision. In the left eye."

"Sucks."

"Could have been worse, I guess."

"Still, it sucks."

He let himself stare at John a little longer than necessary. He really was gorgeous. His hair was slicked back like before, but a bit looser, lighter on the product. He'd worn a long sleeve shirt in the garden, but his short-sleeved button-up today showed off some pretty impressive arms. "So, have things gotten any more exciting for you this week?"

"One of my teammates accidentally ripped one of the bathroom sinks out of the floor." He said it casually, as if recalling a good cup of coffee. "He's crazy strong. It happens sometimes."

"I never thought about how nuts it could get, putting a bunch of mutants all together. Last week, this kid Blink had the hiccups, and all the electronics in the mansion were going on and off every thirty seconds for over an hour."

John smirked and glanced over at him. "I like the vest."

He laughed, and John gave him a questioning look. "My roommate and I had an interesting time agreeing on what I was allowed to wear."

"Allowed to?"

"He's a little up in my business sometimes. In a good sort of way, though. And he has a serious prejudice against scarves."

"Sounds like a fun guy to live with."

"For picking out clothes, yes. But with homework, curfew, and misbehavior, not so much."

"I'm getting déjà vu by proxy." Cal raised an eyebrow, but John just shook his head. "Nevermind. Do you smoke?"

"I used to, but Matt was all I'm-a-doctor about it, so I quit."

John pulled out a pack of Camels. "Mind if I do?"

"Go ahead."

John rolled down his window and put one in his mouth. He pulled out a lighter, but instead of holding it up to the cigarette, he sparked it once in his hand, and pulled up a small flame, suspended above his thumb. Cal watched with rapt interest as he sucked until it was lit, then shook his hand, the flame disappearing. He heard himself laugh quietly.

"What?" he asked, cigarette hanging from his lips.

"Nothing, just a small world is all. You've got fire, I do water, and my roommate's thing is ice."

John started, eyebrows shooting to his hairline. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth. "Ice?"

"Yeah. He can freeze things or he can pull water from the air or something and make stuff out of ice. He's really good with it, too."

He took a drag on his cigarette to give himself a moment to think. "Sounds cool," he agreed.

The drive from the mansion to New York usually took over an hour, but with John's driving, they got there in just over forty-five. Cal looked around at the buildings, feeling latently homesick. "God, I missed the city."

"You lived in Chelsea, right? Near the club where you worked?"

Cal nodded. "When I was living with Matt, yeah."

"And before that?"

He traced his finger along the outer seam of his jeans, near his knee. He considered lying or being vague about it, but what the hell. "Uh, Hunt's Point, mostly," he mumbled.

John looked over at him, a sympathetic frown on his lips. "So Chelsea was really an upgrade."

"Yeah."

"When did you move in with Matt?"

"I was almost sixteen."

"Shit."

"Yep."

"I was on my own for a few years before Xavier found me."

"Yeah?"

John smiled at him reassuringly. "Yeah. You do what you've got to, right?"

Cal bit his lip to stifle a smile.

The restaurant was only two blocks away from the nearest parking garage. It was a fairly warm evening, the weather slowly gearing up for a sweltering New York summer.

John had made reservations, although it wasn't the sort of place that was impossible to get into on a walk-in basis. The waiter led them to a booth near the back and went off to fill their drink orders.

They had just a glass of wine each. John needed to drive, and Cal was supposed to avoid blood-thinning substances until the stitches came out. Cal let John pick something out for him—a pasta dish with sautéed mushrooms—and their conversation stayed light until they were finishing their soup. And then Cal brought up a seemingly innocent question.

"So what's the name of your group anyway?"

John set his spoon down and looked across the table uneasily. "Uh, well that's sort of the thing, Cal. I need to be sure you won't go blabbing or freaking out or anything. I can trust you for that, right?"

Cal frowned. "I think so? Yes. Yeah, I won't freak out. Why?"

"I'm in the Brotherhood."

"Oh. Shit."

"Look, I don't know what you've heard at the mansion…"

"I haven't heard much, but I know your reputation."

"And? Are you freaking out?"

"No."

"I know you probably don't believe in the sort of thing we believe in."

"I don't know what I believe right now."

John looked a bit relieved. "Well, in any case, I do believe in it. I do care about it, but at the end of the day, it's my job. It's sort of frowned upon by most Brotherhood members, but I consider myself an individual first. Call me self-interested or whatever."

"Do you kill people?"

He drummed his fingers on the table. "I have, yes."

"A lot of people?"

"Almost all of them were in combat-type situations. Or evil people that needed taking out. People who were hurting mutants."

Cal thought quietly for a moment. "But there have been, like, collateral damage killings, right?"

"Yeah. It happens. I don't like it, but it happens."

They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Cal spoke up again.

"Well, no wonder you didn't freak about me killing Matt."

John laughed, but reeled it in quickly. "So, is this okay with you? I'd understand if you wanted to stay away from that sort of thing."

"It's fine. Kind of, I dunno, weird or something, but it's fine."

He smiled at Cal—what Toad snidely referred to as his 'panty dropper smile.' "Good. I'm glad."

Their entrees came soon after that, and John amped the charm up about a hundred and ten percent. He may have been a royal class fuck-up, but if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to make someone want him. Cal couldn't finish his meal, so John gladly helped him, periodically insisting, "Oh, you should have another bite of this," and feeding it to him across the table. It should have been sickeningly cutesy and way too much for a first date, but it was just playful with John.

John paid, and Cal didn't argue, and they headed back out onto the street. The sun had sunk behind the buildings. They found the car and John turned to him without unlocking it. "So, where to now? I'd say we could go for drinks, but I have my car and you have your stitches. We'll need to leave by ten if you want to make curfew…do you?"

Cal stepped in close, a wry grin on his face, nearly backing John against the car. "John, I would be really disappointed if you took me back to the mansion tonight."

With a triumphant smirk, John leaned forward to catch Cal's lips in a kiss, a hand cupping his jaw. They tugged themselves toward one another and fell against the side of the car, hands grasping hips, tongues sliding together.

John pulled back after a few heated moments, ego doing a little victory dance in his head. "There's a Brotherhood apartment in Manhattan Valley. Everyone else is at the base or out of the area."

Cal nodded and got into the car once it was unlocked. The drive was silent, almost tense. Once John had parked in the lot behind the building, he tugged Cal inside and up the stairs to the apartment.

From what he could see around John while pushed up against the door, the place wasn't the greatest. There was a TV and a lumpy couch, a kitchenette and a single bedroom. The carpeting was faded and threadbare, but it seemed clean and he had John's shirt unbuttoned now. The apartment was forgotten. He ran his hands down the hard planes of John's stomach as he shrugged off his vest, letting it pool on the floor with John's shirt.

He pushed Cal's shirt off and kissed down to his collarbone, sucking and nipping. His hands gripped Cal's ass, pulling their groins flush together. Cal made a little gasping moan and he tugged them toward the couch. The five feet to the bedroom seemed much too far. Shoes and pants were shed and he pushed Cal long-ways onto the couch. He stopped to retrieve the condom and lube packet he'd put in his pocket 'just in case.'

Cal snickered breathily when he saw them. "You came prepared. How Boy-Scout of you."

As Cal scooted back across the couch, John kneeled in the vacated space between his legs. He didn't spend long on his chest or stomach, moving his mouth quickly down to Cal's cock. He pulled it into his mouth, feeling fingers grasp his hair, and gave it a few enthusiastic sucks before pulling off and making his way down lower.

Cal lifted his hips accommodatingly, draping his right leg over the back of the couch. He groaned out John's name as he ran his tongue across his hole. John worked it with his mouth for a bit, building up enough spit to slip a finger in comfortably.

"Fuck, John, more."

He tore the lube packet open and slicked it on his fingers, fitting in a second, and then a third. His teeth grazed along the line of Cal's hipbone. He sucked a mark onto it. He thrust his fingers in and out steadily. And then he did this _thing_ with his fingers that had Cal bucking and crying out.

"Come on, _please_, fuck me."

And John had never been one to turn down a request like that. He slipped the condom on, smeared on the remaining lube, and lifted Cal's left leg over his shoulder. He pressed in, nearly bending Cal in half and barely restraining himself from thrusting in all at once. Cal rolled his hips in encouragement, and he pulled out most of the way before bucking back in. He picked up a rhythm, turning to press his mouth to the calf resting on his shoulder. His hands ran down the thin thighs in front of him.

Cal had closed his eyes, hands gripping the couch arm behind his head.

"Open your eyes."

They opened obediently, pupils blown so wide, the bright blue was just a thin ring around them. He rolled his hips and moaned, biting on his lower lip. Blonde hair was mussed up and sticking to his forehead.

"Fuck, you look so good like this. You have no idea how sexy you look right now."

Cal pressed back against him with a mindless whimper, which turned to a near shout when John thrust roughly into his prostate.

"Come on, baby." He moved his hand down to grip Cal's cock, jerking it in time with the harsh snap of his hips. "Come for me. Let me hear you come."

With one more roll of his hips, Cal cried out, hands gripping the couch desperately. John thrust into him twice more, and then swore and came.

Once he'd caught his breath, he pulled back and tied the condom off. Cal's legs curled back in slowly. He rubbed at the tired and stretched-out backs of his thighs, grinning like an idiot. "Can I use your bathroom to clean up?"

He nodded and pointed it out. Cal disappeared through the door, not bothering to close it. The sound of running water came from the bathroom. John got up and tossed the condom out in garbage in the bedroom. He looked up and saw Cal leaning against the doorframe.

"I feel so classy."

John smirked. "Why's that?"

"Because you bought be dinner first."

He laughed and walked over, tugging Cal into the room. "You're welcome. Really." John kissed him and fell back on the bed, dragging him down on top. "Do you mind if I wait 'til tomorrow to drive you back?"

"I should hope you would wait. There's no way I'm done with you yet."


	11. 10: Freestyle through Flotsam

Building Neptune

Chapter Ten: "Freestyle through Flotsam"

Their sleep had been sporadic at best, but even though his head seemed filled with fuzz when he awoke, John was feeling more relaxed than he had in weeks. Months, even. The guy was a fucking incredible lay. Though, being a retired working boy and all, he wasn't exactly surprised. He knew what he was doing, but, more than that, well…

Well, Toad was a fucker, but he wasn't wrong. There was a certain familiarity that he found _comforting_, for lack of a better word. The eyes were a bit deeper and his voice a bit too effeminate and he was fucking skinny whereas Bobby was a bit boxier, built like a swimmer. But it was pretty damn uncanny anyway.

At one point, he'd had Cal on his elbows and knees underneath him. His arms had given out and his face was pressed into the comforter, and John stretched out over that long, muscled back, one hand tangled in that mussed-up, sweat slicked, dirty blond hair, his hips snapping forward steadily. And it was almost perfect. Almost.

Leaning forward over his back, mouth running up the length of his spine, John stopped short at a series of raised lines just below his neck. He pulled back to look at them, slowing just slightly. He ran his fingers over the letters. FAG. Cal went silent, his hands fisting in the blankets. He closed his eyes. For a moment, he considered asking about it. Or maybe just ignoring it. Instead, he ducked his head back down and ran his tongue lewdly over the scars, sucking his way from them up the back of his neck to the underside of his jaw, by his ear. Cal was shaking, a low whimper of his name on his lips.

No, he wasn't perfect, but he sure as hell was close. He was familiar, and that's what he was after, anyway, not the genuine article.

Because, fuck the genuine article.

Cal mumbled and rolled over, eyes still closed. "You're hell on my beauty sleep, you know," he yawned.

John chuckled groggily and stretched his arms over his head. He felt sticky and sleepy and yet, even after an entire night of fucking, was definitely sporting some morning wood. He felt Cal shift closer to him on the bed, skin pressing against his side, mouth moving along his neck.

"I think I can forgive you, though."

"Oh yeah? Good. I was worried." He ducked his head down and caught him in a kiss.

Cal moved on top of him, movements in slow-motion like moving through molasses, limbs achy and heavy from their night's activities. They made out despite morning breath, hands sliding over sweat-soaked skin. Cal reached for the bedside table for another condom.

"I think there's some more lube in the other drawer."

"M'fine. We fucked like two hours ago."

"Nuh-uh. It's nine-thirty. It's been at least three hours."

He slid the condom on. Cal pressed him down into the bed, hands balancing on John's shoulders as he lowered onto him. His head fell back and he gasped. "John."

x

Bobby wasn't an idiot. He knew Cal hadn't actually cleared his night's excursion with a teacher like he'd told him to. And he wasn't all that shocked when Cal wasn't home by curfew. So, being the wonderful roommate that he was, he covered for him.

Except that Cal didn't come back at all that night.

He woke up around eleven, fully expecting Cal to be in his bed, where he belonged. Yeah, fine, his roommate didn't give a shit about curfew, and he wasn't about to come home at ten thirty on a Friday. He got that. But to stay out all night?

Bobby got out of bed and tugged his clothes on quickly. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had no idea who this guy was, that _Cal_ probably had no idea who this guy was, and Cal didn't have a cell phone to call if he was in trouble, and he undoubtedly had never bothered to memorize the school's number. This guy could be some psycho government agent gathering up mutants to experiment on. Fuck, he was going to be in so much trouble for letting this happen.

Scott was talking to the Professor in his office with the door open. Bobby barged in without introduction. "Please don't kill me."

They weren't the first words Mr. Summers liked to hear from a student. "Yes, Bobby?"

He ran a hand through his hair and cringed as he spoke. "Cal went out last night. He had a date. I covered for him at curfew."

Mr. Summers and Xavier both frowned, eyes fixed on him.

"Except he's still not back, and he said it was just some random guy he met in town, and…well, that could be really, really bad."

Letting out a heavy sigh, Scott aimed a finger at him. "We'll talk about this later, Bobby." He wheeled the Professor out from behind his desk and into the hallway. "Cerebro, sir?"

"Yes, I think so."

They were just getting into the elevator when Bobby heard the front doors slam closed. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. His teachers reemerged from the elevator, and he followed them from a distance to see how bad it was going to be.

Cal froze just inside the doorway, a deer in the headlights of Scott's gritted teeth and the Professor's disapproving frown. He was wearing a t-shirt a size too big for him, those ridiculous painted-on pants, and had his shirt, vest, and underwear from the night before balled up under his arm. His hair was wet, freshly washed. There were reddish-purple marks littering his neck. He took a few hesitant steps forward. And he was walking funny. Bobby slapped the heel of his hand into his forehead. This was bad. This was really bad.

"Um, good morning."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Scott snapped.

"Saying a few Our Fathers before you send me to Purgatory?" He was trying to lighten things up. That was the worst possible thing he could try to do right now.

"Where were you?"

Cal gave Bobby a questioning look, and Bobby nodded in response. Yeah, he'd told them.

"Look, we just went out for dinner and it was late, so I stayed the night."

"Yeah, it looks like it was an innocent slumber party."

Xavier put up a hand to cut Scott off. "Calin, we have rules here for a reason. You are officially in the school's custody now, and we are responsible for your safety. If you had gotten into trouble, we would have had no way of knowing. What on Earth makes you think this is acceptable behavior?"

Cal was blushing now, staring at the floor. "Uh, I just didn't think you'd notice, I guess. Or, I mean, I guess I didn't really think about it at all."

"This school has done a great many things for you, and we have been happy to do it. I should hope you would remember that in the future. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to. Scott, you can take it from here."

Bobby had pressed himself against the wall, trying to remain invisible. The Professor gave him a sharp look on his way past. Cal actually looked relieved at the Professor's departure, which was stupid, because now Scott had no reason to hold back.

"In my office. Now."

"Uh, do you think I could stop by my room first…?"

Scott gave him a deadly look and Cal shut up. He spun on his heel and stalked off down the hallway, Cal walking stiffly behind him. Once he was halfway down the hallway, Scott turned and looked at Bobby. "What, you think you're off the hook? I said, in my office."

Bobby grimaced and trailed after him, falling into step with his roommate's tight, careful gait. He leaned over casually, speaking low enough that Scott wouldn't hear. "You look like you broke your pelvis. I'm guessing you had a good time?"

Cal smirked and leaned back toward him. "Honey, I had five good times."

He put a hand up over his mouth to muffle a snort. Scott stopped at the door to his office and turned, glaring at them while they caught up. "Take a seat, both of you."

They shuffled into the office, Bobby dropping easily into one of the chairs in front of the desk. Cal lowered himself into his, wincing slightly. Bobby swore he saw Scott twitch at that. He walked around to stand on the other side of the desk. He frowned at Cal. "You look uncomfortable, Cal. Is something wrong?" His tone was cold and hard.

"I'm fine."

"Not hurt are you?" He was goading at him.

Cal's lip curled in annoyance. "Just had a good work out. You understand. I know how important physical fitness is to you."

"Really? You think now is the right time to be a smartass with me?"

"Well, what do you want me to say? I'm sore from getting fucked all night?"

"You watch your mouth."

Cal opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. He shook his head and leaned back.

"What the hell were you thinking? You know the rules here, Cal."

Cal snorted. "Let's not pretend you're upset that I broke the rules."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Bobby spoke up. This wasn't somewhere he wanted to be going. "Cal, don't."

He turned on his roommate with a near snarl. "What the hell do you know about it, Bobby?"

There was a split second of heavy, silent communication between them. Bobby's face registered with a wave of hurt which quickly fizzled into panic, then near pleading before he masked it. Cal's eyes widened slightly, and he turned back to Scott. He'd failed to notice the exchange.

Cal cleared his throat. "It means you can be accepting 'til you're blue in the face, but when you actually have to see the reality that I fuck other men, I make you uncomfortable."

Scott gritted his teeth and leaned forward across his desk. "I think I've faced that reality quite well enough by now. Or did you forget that I found you passed out in a pool of blood with your pants around your knees?"

Bobby's eyes went wide and Cal blushed hard, sinking into his chair.

"That's what I thought."

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was going out. It was stupid."

"Who is this guy?"

"Just a guy I met." He deliberated for a moment. "Daniel." He'd had a friend at the club named Daniel. It would be easy to remember.

"So you know nothing about him, I'm guessing. And do I even want to know how much older than you he is?"

Cal brightened up a bit. "Believe it or not, he's actually my age!" Scott raised an eyebrow either in condescension or doubt. He subdued his expression and muttered, "I'm as surprised as you…"

"Why? How old was your last boyfriend?" Bobby sounded startled.

"He was only like twenty-five."

Scott snorted and sat down. "When you met him. When you were fifteen."

"Oh. Well." Bobby kept his eyes averted, sorry he'd drawn attention to himself.

"Bobby, I'm disappointed that you'd let this sort of thing happen. You know better."

"I know. I thought he would just come back later."

"Still. Why would you cover for him?"

Cal looked at him expectantly, cocking his head to the side. He shifted uncomfortably. "I dunno. You were just so happy about the whole date thing. And you haven't really been happy much since you moved in. I didn't want to wreck it."

His roommate's expression softened. "Mr. Summers, Bobby told me to clear it with one of you."

Scott sighed and looked between the two of them. "Okay. Cal, you're completely mansion-bound for the next two weeks. No shopping trips, no going out for food, nothing. After that, I don't want you to step foot off grounds without clearing it with a teacher. And no more sleepovers, period."

"What!"

"You were expecting different?"

"I'm not allowed to stay with a guy, what, ever?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Cal laughed. "If you don't want me having sex, just say that, okay?"

"I don't want you having sex."

"It's a little late for that one, Mr. Summers."

"You're seventeen, you're under our custody, and there are rules here. The behavior you've gotten away with in the city isn't acceptable here."

"Look, I get the rules. I do. If I got killed or something, it would be on you, so, yeah, I know I should tell you where I'm going. And, like, not drinking and illegal stuff like that is fine. But my personal relationships are none of your business. For Christ's sake, I've been having sex since I was thirteen. If I told you I was going to stop because you said to, I'd be lying."

"Well, then, we have a problem."

"Jesus, don't be such a prude!"

Bobby dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Cal…" he groaned.

Scott's stared at Cal for a long, silent moment. "You know, I don't know if I'm more disappointed that you're so dependent on sex or that you're running off and screwing some guy less than two months after you killed your last boyfriend."

Cal's mouth fell open. Wetness welled in his wounded eyes. He made a breathy, indignant noise, somewhere between a huff and a sob. "Fuck you." He stood and left the office. Scott didn't stop him.

Bobby kept his eyes fixed on the corner of Scott's desk, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. "Um. Can I…?"

"You're not off the hook completely here, Bobby." Scott's heart wasn't in it anymore, though. He'd crossed a line. He knew it. "You're grounded for the weekend and I'm holding you responsible for his whereabouts. If he sneaks out and you know about it, you're in it with him next time."

Bobby nodded vaguely.

"You can go."

x

"So why didn't you tell me?" By the time Bobby caught up with Cal in their room, the other boy had regained his composure somewhat.

Bobby closed the door. "Tell you what?"

"Why didn't you tell me you're queer?"

"What makes you think—?"

"Please, I saw the look on your face."

He opened his mouth to argue, and then closed it and sat on his bed. "I just…I like to keep it quiet, okay? It's not something I've dealt with all the way."

Cal studied him for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He sat on his bed, facing his roommate. "But you knew I'd get it, didn't you?"

"Yeah, sure, but what was I supposed to say? 'Hi, I'm your new roommate. You're gay? Hey, me too!' It just never seems to fit into conversation."

"How about, 'Hey, can I talk to you about something?' It's not that hard."

Bobby sighed and fell backward onto his bed. "It is. You don't get it. You're lucky. You're all up in people's faces about it. You have been for fucking ever. I've got this whole school-mascot perfect-student image built up around me from before I'd even admitted it to myself. I don't know how to fit this into all of that. I've tried. I just…It's Scott."

"Mr. Summers? What, you think he'd be mad or something?"

"No, but like you said, just because you accept something doesn't mean you're comfortable with it, and I don't want him looking at me differently. He's like my mentor or Yoda or something. And." He sat up suddenly, glaring and jabbing a finger toward Cal. "And if you tell _anyone_ this next part _ever_, I will never forgive you, but…" His voice fell to a mumble. "Well, Scott was my first crush."

Cal was quiet for a moment before cracking up. "Aww! That's so _cute_!" he teased.

"Shut up, Cal!"

"I can see it now!" He stood up, gesturing grandly as he painted the picture. "Sweet, pubescent little Bobby sitting in class hiding a boner under his desk, staring wistfully at his rugged, gorgeous math teacher."

"I said, shut up! You're such a dick!" Bobby was fighting off a smile, though, shoving Cal so he toppled backward onto his bed. He was undeterred.

" And when he's called on to do a problem on the board, he has to cover himself with a painfully obvious notebook, praying that the hunky object of his affection doesn't notice!"

His roommate pounced, tickling his sides mercilessly. "Now you're gonna get it!"

Cal squirmed and laughed, trying to catch his breath. He shoved and flailed at him, somehow managing to yank him forward, kicking his legs out from under him so Bobby fell on top of him.

They both stilled, breathing heavily and staring at one another. Bobby finally broke the eye contact, laughing breathily as he turned his head. "Oh, Jesus." He got up, retreating to his own bed.

Cal snorted and smiled at him for a moment.

"So. How about what you didn't tell me?"

"About?"

"You killing your boyfriend."

"Right." His smile disappeared and he sat back up. "It's a really long story."

"Hey, we're both grounded. What else do we have to do?"

"Uh, well, I lived with Matt for like two years. It was great at first…"


	12. 11: Go with the Gulf Stream

Building Neptune

Chapter Eleven: "Go with the Gulf Stream"

He called John two days later to explain his imprisonment.

"I can't say I'm surprised. God, I knew we shouldn't have waited so long to take you back."

"For what's it's worth, I'm glad we did anyway."

He imagined the soft twist of John's lips on the other end of the conversation. "Me too."

"I don't know what I'm gonna do now, though. I thought I was bugging out before. And Summers was being such a fucking asshole. I don't even want to get into that right now."

John snorted. "Yeah, I was never his favorite either. He's not much for free spirits."

"Or minding his own damn business."

"That, too."

Cal sighed into a thoughtful pause. "I want to see you again."

"Don't worry about it. You're not actually going to be stuck there."

"What? Why?"

"Cal, I was grounded more often than I wasn't when I went to Xavier's. I know how to sneak out of that place better than anyone."

x

"I don't want to talk about the rule breaking just now. I'm sure you and Scott have talked plenty about that by now. I do want to talk about you dating, though."

"It's nothing serious. I just ran into this guy a couple times and we hit it off."

Jean sighed. "You think sleeping with someone is 'nothing serious'? Cal, you've just gone through a loss not to mention a lengthy, abusive relationship. I don't think you're ready for this."

Cal rolled his eyes, making a noise of frustration. "Okay, look, I get where you're coming from, but just because you think sex is a huge deal doesn't mean I have to agree! When I was signing up here, you never told me I'd have to believe everything you believe."

"I'm not saying you have to agree with me. I'm telling you my honest opinion. And my opinion is that you're never going to break these negative cycles if you dive back in too soon."

He leaned forward. "But this isn't like those cycle things. We're the same age and he's not, like, bossing me around or anything."

"Who paid for dinner?"

"Well, fine, he did, but it's not like I couldn't get dinner if he hadn't. And it's not like I needed someplace to stay the night. As long as I'm here, I don't need to depend on a guy for anything like that."

She frowned at him for a long moment.

x

"We have to let him go out with this guy."

"What!" Scott spun around as she walked into the room, the door closing behind her. "Cal's guy? And why do we need to do that?"

Jean put her hands on her hips. "Because if we don't, we're making him choose between us and a man, and, given his track record, we don't stand a chance."

He groaned, sitting on the bed heavily. "So, what, we're supposed to cave in so he'll behave irresponsibly here instead of out God-knows-where?"

"Yes." She gave him a hard stare. "At least we know he's safe here."

He shook his head. "This is turning into a disaster already."

"It isn't. I've thought about it since we had that argument. You were right. John Allerdyce was our fault, but it wasn't because we didn't give up on him right away. It's because we refused to acknowledge that some students can't go from their lives before back into the tight little box we've got the rest of these kids in. John had to grow up quickly, take on a lot of responsibility at a very young age. We treated him like a child like any other student, and he fought it. We were suffocating him."

Scott pressed his lips together and bowed his head in thought. After a moment, he looked back up at her, reaching for her hand. "Have I told you lately how incredibly sexy your intelligence is?"

She grinned and leaned down to kiss him. "Not often enough."

He pulled back. "I still don't think giving him the green light to go party and have sex and stay out all night is a good idea."

"I'm not saying we do that. I'm saying we set guidelines. He still goes through the grounding period, like we said. He has to let us know ahead of time if he'll be staying out, he has to tell us where he is and how we can reach him. We need to meet the guy."

Scott smirked. "That's not a bad idea. Having to bring his dates in to meet his teachers might scare him away from it anyway."

She sat on the bed next to him and laced her fingers with his. "Does it terrify you thinking that someday we'll be running this place on our own?"

He nodded.

x

If there had been a window open between them before, now it was like they'd knocked the whole damn wall down. Bobby was reclining on Cal's bed, Cal angled off to the side with his head resting on Bobby's chest and his legs dangling off the edge. One of Bobby's arms was wrapped around him, holding up the Spanish book propped on his stomach.

"Alright. Tener."

Spanish was one of the only classes he wasn't painfully behind in. A lot of the kids in Hunt's Point spoke it, and a few of the guys at work, too.

"Uh, tuve, tuviste, tuvo."

"Excelente."

"And then tuvimos, tuvisteis, tuvieron."

"God, can you just take the test for me? I'll take your math tests."

"Ha, I wish."

Bobby set the book down and stretched his arms over his head. "Break time."

"Yeah, I need a shower before Piotr and Lance get back and take over the bathroom."

"Wish I could have gone dirt biking, but no-o-o."

Cal cringed as he pulled his shirt off, depositing it in the hamper. "Shit, you know I'm really sorry about all that. I didn't even consider you'd get in trouble."

He sighed and rolled onto his side, fixing his gaze on Cal's hips as he lowered his jeans. "Well, at least it looks like it was for a good cause."

Looking down at his hip bone, Cal laughed at the dark red hickey John had left there.

"How was he anyway?"

Glancing at the bathroom door in a moment of contemplation, he finally let out a huff of air and sat down on Bobby's bed, cross-legged in his briefs. "Really fucking good."

"Yeah? Do I get details?"

"Well, first of all, he's a _really_ good kisser, even if he sort of has ashtray mouth. I barely even noticed most of the time. And he's got this body like, ugh, you don't even know. Abs and arms, the whole deal. He even has cum gutters."

"_What_? What the hell is that?"

Cal leaned back, running his fingers along the inside of his hipbone, along the waistband of his underwear. "You know, when a guy's got muscles that make lines from his hips to his groin."

"And that's really what you call them?"

"That's what everyone calls them, Bob-o. Duh. I swear, this place is worse than living under a rock. Anyway, so he's super gorgeous on top of that, sort of a James Dean _Rebel Without a Cause_ sort of deal. I think that's what he's going for, actually. He's got the slicked hair and everything, which, usually? Is kind of gross. But it works for him."

Bobby frowned momentarily, things starting to sound a bit too familiar.

"We got to his apartment and first thing he fucked me into the couch, which was mostly, like, a get-the-tension-out-so-we-last-longer-next-time sort of deal."

Bobby shook his head, trying to cast off his crazy thoughts. "Your life…"

"And then we moved it to the bedroom and things only got better from there. Size-wise?" He made an 'OK' sign with his hand. "And he wasn't afraid to play kind of rough, you know? And his rim jobs were, like, out of this world. Oh! And he did this _thing_ with his fingers, I dunno, like…" He made the gesture with his hand.

Bobby's eyes widened, but he reigned in the shock quickly. Way, way too familiar. "Well, it sounds like it was worth it."

"Still. Sorry I got you in trouble."

"Eh, it's fine. It's not like I had big plans."

Cal opened his mouth to say something else, but Bobby threw a pillow at him.

"Go shower. You reek."

x

He couldn't tell Bobby what was going on. He'd already gotten him in enough trouble. He had to wait until week later when Storm would have hall monitor duties. She couldn't read his mind or sniff him out like Jean or Logan, and she didn't hate his fucking guts like Summers. At John's bidding, he faked sick all day, making sure to let Storm see him all out of it after classes.

"Are you feeling alright?"

He shook his head, rubbing at his face tiredly. "I've had a headache like all day. I'm gonna go do my homework and go to bed early, I think."

She patted his shoulder. "Alright, Cal. Feel better."

He went upstairs and attempted to work on homework until six, when Bobby stopped into the room to change into his training gear.

"Hey, Bobby? I'm feeling super shitty. I think I'm just gonna go to bed. Think you can keep it down when you come back?"

Bobby frowned for a moment, and then reeled it in. He nodded. "Yeah, sure. I'll try not to wake you up." He hesitated, then moved over to his dresser and changed. As soon as he left the room, Cal yanked his dirty clothes out of the hamper and shoved them under his blankets, making a Cal-shaped lump. John really was an escape expert. He topped the pile off with a fuzzy yellow sweater that would poke out of his comforter just slightly. So long as Bobby kept the lights off, it would look like his hair.

After that, it was the terrifying prospect of climbing out of his second story window. He slipped after his foot hit the first floor window sill, but the fall wasn't far. Then he hopped the back fence—which was a struggle all on its own. He really needed to invest in some pants that fit.

His ride was already out on the street, making a show of checking him out as he walked out the car. He smirked and added a playful swing to his hips, putting on a show. He climbed into the car, leaning across the gearstick to plant a kiss on John's lips. "I've got to hand it to you. You're a genius."

John kissed back and smirked. "I know."

Cal blew him on the ride up to the city. They didn't bother to stop for food, instead going straight to the apartment and ordering Chinese food. John taught him how to use chopsticks and they enjoyed egg drop soup and Mongolian beef between bouts of nearly acrobatic sex. Cal had to sneak back into the mansion before six the next morning, and they wanted to cram as much into their short time together as possible.

Bobby got back into the room around ten, keeping as quiet as possible. He stared at the form on Cal's bed and tried to pretend he hadn't done all of this before. He peeled off his clothes and pulled on a clean t-shirt. He stared at the bed again. Creeping up to it, he tugged the covers back with his thumb and forefinger.

Laundry. By the fucking book, even.

He put the blankets back and groaned. Not his problem. So, so not his problem. When Storm stopped by to check (and of course he'd gone when Storm was on duty), he just opened the door a crack and thrust his thumb toward Cal's bed.

"Is he feeling any better?" she whispered.

Bobby shrugged. "He said he was going to bed around six."

She left without further investigation, and Bobby sat on his bed and glared at the lump. John. John fucking Allerdyce. How the hell did this sort of thing happen?

He groaned and tipped his head back against the wall. His mind flashed back to Cal's accounts of his sleepover, and then farther back to first-hand accounts. John pressed against his back. John's hand wrapped around him, his hips pressed against his. John's mouth dragging up his spine. Before he realized what he was doing, his hand had slipped inside his underwear and he was jerking himself off, frantically. He bit his lip to keep back groans. "Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck. Fuck. John."

x

Around three in the morning, they had finally made their way to the bedroom. They were nearing exhaustion, and it was like the last morning, Cal lazily rocking down onto John's cock. He leaned forward, working his lips along John's neck as he circled his hips. Fingers dug into his already bruised hips, pulling him down and guiding the rhythm. The door opened.

"Oh, f'fuck's sake."

Cal sat bolt upright, head whipping around to see a stocky _green_ man standing in the bedroom doorway. "Uh…"

A pillow flew past him, landing just short of the intruder. "Toad! Jesus Christ, get out!" Toad turned and closed the door. John groaned. "Sorry. That's one of my dipshit teammates."

Cal let out a breath. He looked down at John. "Maybe I should get going early, huh?"

John pouted. "Well, don't get up just yet." His hands gripped Cal's waist and turned them so the scrawnier boy was flat on his back under him. "We were doing something."

He grinned and hitched his legs around John's waist. "Well, I meant after, of course."

John thrust into him hard, setting a harsh pace and giving him an almost possessive kiss. They were done in less than five minutes.

x

After he turned the shower on, Cal immediately pressed his ear to the door to listen in.

"Fuckin' hell, John. I told you to leave it th'fuck alone!"

"What's the problem? It's not like I'm recruiting him or something!"

"Yeh, well, if that's you not tryin' to recruit, I'd hate t'see you when you were."

"I'm serious. Just because I'm fucking him doesn't mean he's going to join up."

"Right, if everyone you fucked joined up, we'd have t'put on an annex."

"Who I fuck and what I do with my personal life is none of your goddamned business, Toad."

"It is when y'fuckin' an X-Man."

John laughed. "Oh, please. He's been there, what, two weeks? He's probably never even seen the uniforms. He's a glorified houseguest at this point."

Cal flinched, not sure why those words upset him so much.

"Just sayin', if y'gonna fuck a blood-traitor X-kid, you might as well get what y'really after."

Then came a smacking sound as a fist flew, and loud scuffling noises followed. He considered going out to break it up, but didn't want to give himself away. He stepped into the shower.

When he got out, John and Toad were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, glaring ahead. John's lip was split and there was a faint smear of blood under his nose. Toad's right sleeve was burnt. He had a beer, alternately drinking it and pressing the cool bottle to the side of his head.

"Well. Looks like you two had fun." He tried not to sound nervous, standing there in a towel.

Toad lowered his beer and sneered at him. "What's it t'you, pretty boy?"

He gave the man his best 'bitch, please' face. Without a second thought, he flicked his fingers and the liquid in the bottle splashed up, hitting Toad in the face.

Toad leapt to his feet, ready to charge at him when John caught him by the back of his shirt, laughing. "Go get dressed, Cal."

When he stepped out of the room, Toad was waiting, leaning against the wall. "Y'not expectin' him to run off and marry you or nothin', are you?"

Cal raised an eyebrow at him. "Do I look like Beyoncé to you?"

Toad looked confused.

"You know, Single Ladies?" He did the hand flip.

Toad frowned.

"Nevermind."

x

Bobby heard him come in the window just after five. His roommate rustled around for a bit, clearing the laundry off of his bed. He kept his breathing level, stared at the wall in front of him motionless. A quiet groan drifted over from Cal's bed as he settled into his blankets. Snaking his hand under his own blanket, Bobby pressed the heel of his hand against his groin.


	13. 12: Taking a Dip in the Tidewater

Buliding Neptune

Chapter Twelve: "Taking a Dip in the Tidewater"

He'd called John three times since he had snuck out, but hadn't gotten an answer. Cal assured himself vehemently that he wasn't broken up about John not wanting to see him again. The only reason he was upset was because John didn't have the balls to tell him they weren't going to fuck anymore. That's all it was—fucking. He hadn't expected to run off and move in with some guy like he had with…well, it was ridiculous. He didn't need that, anyway. He was seventeen and he had a roof over his head. He didn't need a relationship to have stability or some shit like that. And it wasn't like he'd be able to get away again anytime soon, anyway, so it was probably better that they stopped trying to make it work. But when Scott came to talk to him, he found it a little harder to express things that way.

Mr. Summers knocked on the half-open door and poked his head in. "Cal?"

"Come in." He didn't look up. His lack of communication with John had left him with plenty of free time on his hands. He'd finally picked up that book Xavier had given him. It wasn't half bad.

"Sorry to interrupt your studying. I was hoping we could have a little talk."

His eyes raised a fraction of a degree and sighed. "Alright." He set the book aside, scooting up on his bed and crossing his legs.

There was room for Scott on the end of the bed, but he opted for Cal's desk chair, pulling it over and straddling it backward. "So, you know your grounding is almost up."

"The no leaving at all part of it, anyway." Cal rolled his eyes.

"Well, that's what I want to talk about. Jean and I have discussed it, and we decided it isn't really fair to make you change your lifestyle so drastically. The other students date amongst themselves plenty, but you don't have as many options."

_That you know of_, Cal thought.

"Now, we still can't let you go running off whenever you please. There are going to be some ground rules." Cal eyed him uncertainly. "Obviously, we want to know when you'll be out and how long you'll be gone. No school night excursions, and you have to clear them with one of the teachers."

"Okay."

"And not just Logan."

Cal scowled slightly. "Okay."

"We also want to know where you'll be and the best way to contact you in an emergency. We want to know who you're with, too. And we want to meet him." He let the last part settle in.

The boy fish-mouthed momentarily, unsure of what to say.

"Will that be a problem? This guy—David?"

"Daniel." He sent a silent thank you to the real Daniel, who was probably humping a pole in a cowboy hat right about now.

"Right. Daniel. We will be able to meet him, won't we?"

Picking anxiously at the bedspread, Cal chewed on his lower lip. "Um, well, I don't even know if I'm going to see him again is the thing."

"Why? Was there something wrong with him?" Scott momentarily forgot the delicate, unspoken boundaries they'd set up between themselves.

Cal blushed and stared at the blanket. "Uh, it's just, well, he hasn't really…called me back." And he was _fine_ with it, absolutely _fine_. It was just fucking and it was done, and who cared anyway? Regardless, he felt something heavy start to settle in his stomach as he spoke. He must look like such a stupid slut, getting picked up and dropped like that.

They sat quietly for a long moment, Cal internally insisting that he was okay, and Scott figuring out what to say because he was clearly not okay. He settled on, "What an asshole."

The boy laughed quietly, seeming to get a grip somewhat. He shook his head. "It's fine. It was just a quick thing, you know? I mean, I wasn't expecting anything else." Maybe he was lying. He scrambled for more excuses. "Besides, he was probably, like, my rebound guy, right? Just getting me on my feet after—" And he remembered what Scott had said in his office. Two months and he was already off fucking some guy. Some guy that obviously didn't give a shit about him, when Matt had loved him so much he went fucking insane over it. He swallowed heavily and clenched his jaw.

Scott moved from the chair over to the bed. He put a strong hand on Cal's wide, bony shoulder. "Hey. Look at me." Cal didn't. "Look at me." Cal looked up. "It's okay for you to move on. You've been through a lot of rough stuff, and you deserve something better. Just give yourself some time, alright?"

He sniffled and nodded rapidly. He tried to not cry. It wasn't working.

"Come here." Mr. Summers wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a sideways hug. Cal buried his face against his teacher's chest, the tears picking up momentum as he let them out.

"I miss him so much. I just really miss him."

Scott held the kid tight against him, not saying anything, but not letting go. The carefully constructed, unspoken barriers melted away, and not just the ones between him and Cal. As he watched this kid cry against him, trusting him with bare emotion, he felt something within himself give way.

"So who is this chick anyway, boss?"

Magneto turned slightly in his seat, so that John, in the back of the helicopter, could just see his profile. "She makes force fields. She's a replacement for the hydrokinetic you two failed to collect."

Toad glanced back from the pilot's seat and exchanged a look with John.

"Why not just go pick up someone else that makes force fields? It's not like they're a true rarity, and we don't know anything about this one. It doesn't seem worth the trouble."

"Because she's the only known mutant of her kind powerful enough to complete our objective."

John frowned. Magneto had been talking about this 'objective' for months, but refused to give details. "So why don't we pick up another hydrokinetic? They're not as common, but there are others."

"Again, none powerful enough."

Toad snorted. "What, y'tellin' me tha' little brat is th'most powerful hydrokinetic we can find?"

Magneto nodded demurely. "Castillo is the one who pointed him out to us. She places him at a level four, at least."

John's mouth fell open. "What?" He and Toad spoke in unison.

"I told you he was a powerful young mutant, didn't I?"

"It's just he never—" John cut himself off. "I mean, he didn't seem so powerful."

His boss's tone turned sharp. "Well, I'm sure the three seconds you two idiots spent with him weren't incredibly indicative."

They both fell silent, Toad abashed and John reeling.

Cal was lying on his bed, just finishing up chapter three of _A Separate Peace _while Bobby worked on some calculus. Cal started laughing.

"What?" Bobby glanced back at him.

"This book Xavier gave me. I guess he thought I'd relate because it's super gay."

He left his desk and sat down on the foot of Cal's bed, lifting his roommate's feet out of the way and settling them in his lap. "_A Separate Peace_? We read that in middle school. I don't remember anything about gays in it."

"Did you actually read it? Well, first of all, all-male boarding school. Duh. That's the beginning of like, every gay porno ever made. And this Gene guy is _totally_ crushing on his roommate, Finny, and Finny hits on him all the fucking time. Listen to this: 'His skin radiated a reddish copper glow of tan, his brown hair had been a little bleached by the sun, and I noticed that the tan made his eyes shine with a cool blue-green fire.' I mean, you don't just say that about any dude. Oh, and Gene's always noticing people's clothes. Dead giveaway, much?"

Bobby snorted and scooted up to lay alongside Cal, craning his neck to see the book. "I think you're reading a little too much into it." He looked at his roommate and trailed a finger along his temple gingerly. "Hey, you got your stitches out."

"Yep. My skin is officially able to hold itself together. But that's not the point. The point is, this is, like, the gayest thing I've ever read."

"You don't read very much."

Cal flicked his forehead. "Shut up. How about this?" He flipped back for a moment, searching for the passage he wanted. "So Finny has this pink shirt, right? So Gene says, 'Pink! It makes you look like a _fairy_!' and Finny's all cool about it, like 'Does it? I wonder what would happen if I looked like a fairy to everyone.' Obviously he's trying to give Gene a hint."

"Why doesn't he just wait 'til he's jacking off at night and offer to give him a hand? That's what they do in 'like, every gay porno ever made.'" He mocked Cal's voice. It's also what John had done.

"Because it's literature, dumbass. People don't jack each other off in literature."

"English class would be a lot more interesting if they did."

Cal snorted and set the book down on his chest. "But it is really dumb. Gene totally won't get the hint. He's all, like, awestruck and acts like he's jealous of how cool Finny is, but he's Finny's best friend, so he's, like, cool by proxy anyway. Really, he's just jealous because Finny's super popular and everyone loves him, and he's insecure or something and thinks Finny's gonna ditch him for someone else. Except Finny won't because he has the hots for Gene."

"Sounds like a lot of teenage drama I've seen."

"I know, right?"

Bobby took the book and set it on the nightstand. He turned back to Cal and wrapped an arm around his middle, snuggling against his chest playfully. "Don't worry. If I had the hots for you, I'd just offer to jerk you off. Just in case you were insecure or something."

Cal ran his fingers through Bobby's hair. "Oh, you're such a stand-up guy."

It was a rather elaborate operation. Pyro and Toad were going to stake the lab out for the next two days while Magneto arranged tactics around the blueprints they provided. As far as they could tell, mutant test subjects were kept in the sub-basement area, just below the security base. They had key codes on every door, a constant rotation of armed guards, and more cameras than Hollywood.

John was less worried about that than about sitting in a surveillance van with Toad for two fucking days.

"So who woulda figured y'little twink is a four, hm?"

He scowled at Toad, and then relented. Slouching in his chair, he muttered, "Not me. That's for sure. Jesus. I like the guy and all, but what a waste of power."

John was only ranked at a level three. Toad was a level two—physical mutation only.

"I mean, you'd think someone with those abilities wouldn't get fucked over so much."

"Think he likes bein' fucked over." Toad smirked.

"Yeah, yeah."

"And anyway, how powerful y'are don't mean nothin' compared t'how you use it, yeh?

John shrugged. "I guess."

Toad sighed. The surveillance monitors flashed dully in the dark of the van. "Look, Pyro, are you sure y'know what y'doin'?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—an' don' freak out or anythin', I'm just leveling with you here—this guy isn't much more than a replacement. Y'usin' him as a stand in for Drake."

John gritted his teeth.

"You're fuckin' with him, an' not just in th'good way. Kid's not exactly stable and he's obviously pretty powerful. Look at th'last guy that fucked with him. Are you sure y'wanna put y'self there?"

"I'll be fine, Toad. Mind your own fucking business."

"Why are you still so hung up on that ponce, anyway? He's just a blood traitor Boy Scout pretty with blue eyes."

The lack of warning let John get the jump on him. In a matter of seconds, he had Toad pinned against the floor of the van, straddling his hips with one hand fisted in his shirt. "Shut the fuck up, Toad."

Toad chuckled and leered at him dementedly. "Now, Johnny boy, if this is how y'wanna play it, fine, but m'not gonna cuddle afterward like y'little blonde playthings."

"I said, shut up!" He jerked Toad up and back, knocking his head against the floor.

In another flash of muscle and limbs, their positions were reversed, John on the floor, his arms pinned under Toad's hands, shins holding down his thighs. "Listen, y'little cunt. I think y'forgettin' exactly who is whose superior here. I could break you like a fuckin' toothpick. An' who would miss you, hm? S'long as I found th'boss another level three with long-range powers, no one. We're worthless, Johnny boy. We're what we can do an' that's all."

John swallowed heavily and his lower lip trembled for just a second. He sucked in a ragged breath. "Thought you said you wanted to fuck."His voice sounded hoarse.

Toad stared at him for a moment, almost pitying—or as close as he could come to pitying. He snorted and moved off of him. "Don' be stupid. I dunno where you been."

The water lapped at Bobby's shins pleasantly, and he considered getting back in just for the warmth. The chlorine was settling into his skin as he drip-dried onto the tile and concrete floor. He'd climbed out almost ten minutes ago, but Cal was still at it, barely surfacing for air as he darted up and down the length of the pool. His stitches were out, so he was allowed to go in the chlorine now. He really looked like he belonged there. His movements were effortless, lean limbs slicing through the water with ease, each kick sending him farther than it should have.

Cal reached the end of the pool and surfaced for a grin and a breath, winking at Bobby, before falling backwards into the water and rocketing down toward the bottom. He lay flat there, arms outstretched. He really was gorgeous. No wonder John had gone for him. He could still see hickeys from when Cal had snuck out, along the top of his waistband, his neck, his chest. There were faint bruises on his hipbones from firm gripping fingers. Bobby touched his own hip lightly, remembering those marks.

"Alright. I'm getting pruney. Time to get out." His roommate surfaced in front of him, holding out a hand for Bobby to help him out. He stood and tugged Cal's arm up. The water pushed him up the rest of the way, and he stepped out of the pool.

"Woah. Could you walk on water if you wanted to?"

"Huh. I never thought about it. I guess, if I had it push up under my feet while I walked."

Cal had this air of exhilaration about him that Bobby hadn't seen before, a healthy flush in his cheeks. "You're really good in the water. You're like a fish or something." He handed Cal a towel.

"Ooh, maybe that could be my mutant name—Fishman. Or Tuna or Trout or something."

He snorted and they made their way to the elevator, wet bare feet squeaking on the tile. "Are you into astrology? You could be Pisces. That's the fish one."

"I dunno. I eat a lot of fish. Wouldn't that make me a cannibal?"

Bobby laughed. "What about Aquarius? That's the water one."

Cal hummed thoughtfully and shook his head. "Makes me think of _Hair_. I'd have that song stuck in my head every time someone said it."

"God, now it's stuck in my head," Bobby griped. They stepped into the elevator and he snuck another sidelong glance at his roommate's wet, bruised torso. He stared at the door ahead of them.

"Ugh, I don't know. Maybe I'll never think of one. It is nice to be back in the water, though."

Once they got back to the room, Bobby dropped into his desk chair, towel under his butt so it wouldn't get wet. "You can shower first." He watched out of the corner of his eye as Cal stripped off his wet swim trunks. He eyed the bruises on his hips—places where John's hands had been. There were faint teeth marks on his left butt cheek—places where John's mouth had been. And lower…where John's… Bobby shook his head and looked at his fingernails while his roommate disappeared into the bathroom. He always locked the door that led to Piotr and Lance's room, but they usually kept their door open. Taking a deep breath, he stood and pushed his swim trunks off.

Cal was leaning back into the stream of hot water, steam rising up over the shower curtain. Bobby pulled the curtain aside just slightly as he stepped into the tub. Cal's eyes opened, watching him curiously, but not at all alarmed.

He stepped forward, swallowing nervously before forcing his mouth into a mimic of a familiar cocky smirk. He took on the role and felt the confidence that came with it, shoulders falling back, eyes dragging hungrily over Cal's body. "Want me to jerk you off?"

A grin crept over Cal's face, a laugh bubbling between his lips. His hand grasped the back of Bobby's neck and pulled him into what seemed like a much belated kiss.


End file.
